It has become fashionable to state that one is spiritual but not religious. Usually the distinction is made in regard to highlighting the difference between a practice or set of beliefs that are personal as opposed to collective or dogmatic, and abstract and mercurial as opposed to material and scripted. These are healthy distinctions, relevant to creating distance from one’s personal beliefs and an organization that often obscures it through codification, identity, and fundamentalism.

Recently I have gone back to embracing the words religion and religious, and I have done so, not because my beliefs have come to be more institutional, but because of the root meaning and etymology of the word religion and its meaning, a meaning I feel should be embraced and emphasized since it speaks to something that goes to the core of the human condition. It is possible that such an embrace might make institutionalized religion less dogmatic, while helping other people to understand that religion at heart is a phenomenon that is more human and ever much an essential aspect to the human experience than may be recognized by those turned off by religious fundamentalism.

Etymologically one of the accepted meanings of the word religion comes from the Latin religare, meaning to bind fast or to reconnect.Interestingly this is a similar meaning to the word yoga, which means to bind or to yoke. These are etymological meanings stripped of connotations related to fundamentalist dogma and institutionalism; and indeed, most of us do feel in relationship with something higher. Here ‘higher’ means a felt sense or sensation that there is more to some type of bigger picture than one’s individual life or will and what that will can comprehend, especially in the midst of spectacular experiences.

When people speak of being spiritual they often mention feeling close to or expressing an awareness of something more profound and wondrous, something that seems to defy human cognition or emotion. There is the sense of awe and wonder when it comes to observing nature, or of being in love, or of chance encounters that occur at just the right time; there are feelings that truth is stranger than fiction; that words can’t do many experiences justice; and that some sort of larger script accompanies most of one’s innumerable “sentenced” experiences.

It may seem odd at first to put such sensations and experiences within the realm of religion, but that is only because the word religion has come to take on connotations associated with organized religions and rigid orthodoxies. If one can look past the connotation than one can more comfortably acknowledge a sense for what is happening in those moments in life where one feels entranced or overawed by many of the experiences that accompany it.

Often times there is such a reluctance to embrace religion or even spirituality because one has boxed much of both into the same category without realizing how institutional religion has obscured the original meaning of the word religion as opposed to being in line with it. This is not to deny the relevance to the communal aspect of religion, and the union that surrounds people of a common set of beliefs from getting together.

This is not a deconstruction of organized religion with its strengths and flaws. Rather, the attempts is to encourage people to be more open to embracing the word religion at its original meaning and so open up a person to embracing an aspect of the human experience that I believe is essential to a quality life, irrespective of whether this means using the word God or not.

Carl Jung talked about the religious instinct in human beings. That is, a natural inclination towards the awe, mystery, and wonder accompanying life. More succinctly, he described religion as “A careful and scrupulous observation of that which one regards with awe.” This is an understanding of religion as those wondrous moments being a kind of bedrock for one’s existence, and a kind of compass, something that one can both orient themselves to and be led by in one’s attempt to find meaning in life.

Religion at heart is really about making the wondrous a cornerstone of one’s life. With much of life’s commotion, what keeps us anchored, what inspires us, what do we live for? The joy of seeing one’s children smile? The majesty of a sunset or landscape? The passion of making love? The raw power of many of nature’s phenomenon. The splendor of seeing animals in the wild? The thrill of various adventures and activities? The taste of fine wine, tea, or cigars?

All are variations on the theme of wonder. These experiences bind us to a power that created them, a kind of something, whether one believes it to be the natural order or a “cosmic being”, or both. Whatever the case, one may find it very difficult to have a pleasurable and meaningful existence without fostering an intimate relationship to the spectacular and awe inspiring.

I certainly understand the resistance to embracing or using the words religion or religious, especially in their more common connotational forms. But one need not let the obstructions define them and make one afraid of using them. If we can remember the word in its original sense then we can reconstitute and rehabilitate it so that we stay true to its basic meaning, and help people embrace a core aspect of the human experience, one that can keep us oriented and inspired as we negotiate the task of living and understanding who we are and what we are ultimately connected to.