What Is the Point of Spirituality? 

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I am spiritual but not religious. I like to take a long walk along the beach and in contact with nature. I found it more spiritual in nature than in churches. Our materialistic culture based on the ego system. For example, a mansion, sport car, fancy cloths, jewellery, watches. These are all items to build up our ego. Leading a spiritual life cleanse out a lot of material desire. We only need the necessary to be fulfilled and happy.

“A spiritual experience is neither ineffable nor absurd; the term refers rather to a deeply sustaining interval of relief from the burdens and blindness of being us.” Wow this is beautiful

The cool thing about spirituality is quite often people are on the same page.

I enjoyed the explanation that a spiritual moment coincides with a temporary escape from the ego. To me that is a lot of what spiritualism is - living in the moment, looking beyond the self, and seeing the beauty in all things/people.

Literally to the 1% who's reading this, God bless you, may all your dreams come true, may you be successful in all spheres of life, stay safe and have a wonderful day :)

I've never been spiritual, but now that you've explained spirituality so well, I can be more empathic with people who have a use for it

*“Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there''* David Bowie

Spirituality in a nutshell: Say no to excessive materialism and yes to higher things.

The point of spirituality is to see the reality as it is, without any judgements.

"we make sense of nothing when there's nothing to make sense of"

I relate so much to that. Finding one's way from radical, angry atheism to understanding and experiencing spirituality for oneself is a rewarding and liberating journey.

For me, god is the energy that created all of us and is the energy that we are made of

"...we might find ourselves loving, that is appreciating and delighting, understanding and sympathizing with; with a family of dung beetles, or a moss covered tundra..." God, I love you School of Life!

The practice of *FOCUSING* on your breath in a tough situation, and in calm times, is a simple practice for those who don’t believe in “woo-woo” stuff.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet. Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We may never be properly loved or appropriately appreciated". So true and so sad

Spirituality seems like the right or correct method of reaching true freedom and requires the work we all should focus on. To me it seems worth giving the effort of discipline and selfless hard work which we all have the potential to do in our own way and at our pace! Hopefully the universe/God will reward us even a little at a time so we know we are going in the correct direction🙂🙏🏾

I think according to this definition I can became 'spiritual' as a teenager although it was through rational thought that I arrived at such a state. I thought about all the 'stuff' of the universe and how it is all interconnected and that the 'objects' to which we refer in words have no real world boundaries as everything is in perpetual flux. It occurred to me that I also do not have such edges, that my body is constantly influencing and being influenced by its environment, this environment being the entire universe. I reasoned from this that there was no real boundary between me and the rest of the universe - I was the universe experiencing itself! And that the self could be conceived as a point, like the centre of a circle, having no spatial dimension, whereby a feedback loop in the flow of cosmic information gave rise to the universe's awareness of itself - and that's me. And you.

I found the name "Spirituality" to be hipster and new agey just some years ago. Today, I preach the importance of spirituality all the time and find it to be the most important thing that we don't learn in school. Lucky we have Alain to spread the word.

thanks! too me SPIRITUALITY is just a word for things which are indescribable ....nevertheless this word in our modern time is extremely blown up.....you know it better!

This is one of the most accurate description of those moment i've ever heard, and your animations are AMAZING. BIG PROPS, your work is art.

to the atheists i would like to say, all life on earth descended from one cell, ergo, we are all one. when people say they "feel god", they are actually feeling the oneness of all life. it's a beautiful feeling.

"We may never be properly loved or appropriately appreciated" "Our invisibility and meaningless is a given we can now joyfully accept" As someone who's been suffering from depression all my life and who never once had anyone tell me they love me, I "accepted" these facts years ago. Plot twist: It didn't make me any happier. It made me calmer and more functional, for a time. But now I envy those who have fought these "facts", for I think while their fights might ultimately be futile, the experiences you make along the way are the essence of "being alive"

I'm reading your book about staying CALM, and I can hardly get through a paragraph without having to stop and think about my life, reevaluating it and healing from some old wound or bad way of thinking. I don't agree with every word, but I think 99.9999% agreement is pretty awesome.

*Mindful living is the single most important path towards a profound, fulfilled and joyful life.*

Great video 👌👌👌 spirituality is key in centering our thoughts and emotions, it gives the mind and body a break and it costs nothing

Full transcript: The word ‘spirituality’ has a capacity to divide people like few others. For some, it's an innately beautiful touchstone, the designator of a special kind of experience that is so valuable, it is best left reverentially unexplored and pure, lest one disturb its ethereal mysteries with the cold hand of reason. For others, ‘spiritual’ is just nonsensical bunkum of appeal only to adolescent dreamers, the underemployed and weak minded. But, precisely because spiritual experiences are so often either worshipped or derided, it pays to try to submit them to dispassionate and sober examination, not in order a priori to crush them or honour them, but so as to make them more intelligible, to friend and foe alike. Whatever our suspicions, spiritual moments are capable of being pinned down, split into their constituent elements and assessed with due regard. One should - and can - get respectfully rational about spirituality. BEYOND THE EGO Spiritual moments’ belong to a mood that most of us will only ever irregularly and perhaps haphazardly access, a mood in which practical concerns, are for a time, kept entirely at bay and we accede to a slightly unnerving yet also thrillingly oblique perspective on existence. During these moments, the ordinary world and its pressures are kept at a distance from us. Perhaps it's very early in the morning or late at night; or we might be driving down a deserted motorway or looking down at the earth from a plane tracing its way across Greenland. It might be high summer or a deep-winter evening. We don't have to be anywhere or do anything, there are no immediate threats or passions and we’re liberated to consider the world from a new and unfamiliar angle. The essential element is that we're able to look ‘beyond the ego’. Our customary state is - more than we generally even aware - to be heavily invested in ourselves: we aggressively defend our interests, we strive for esteem, we obsess about our pleasures. It’s exhausting and pretty much all consuming. But in a spiritual moment, maybe helped along by the sound of flowing water or the call of a distant owl, the habitual struggle ceases; we’re freed from our customary egoistic vigilance and we can do a properly extraordinary thing: look at life as if we were not ourselves, as if we were a roaming eye that could inhabit the perspective of anyone or anything else, a foreigner or a child, a crab on a seashore or a cloud on the hazy horizon. In our spiritual state, the ‘I’, the vessel that we’re usually supremely and exhaustively loyal to, ceases to be our primary responsibility. We can take our leave and become a roaming vagabond promiscuous thing, a visitor of other mentalities and modalities, as concerned with all that is not us as we are normally obsessed by what is. A NEW SENSITIVITY As a result, a range of emotions that we would typically feel only in relation to us can be experienced around other elements too. We might feel the pain of someone we hardly know; or be gratified by the success of a stranger. We could take pride in a beauty or intelligence to which we were wholly unconnected. We can be imaginative participants in the entire cosmic drama. LOVE There might, in all this, be a particular emphasis on love. That could sound odd, because we’re used to thinking of love in a very particular context, that of the circumscribed affection that one person might have for a very accomplished and desirable other. But understood spiritually, love involves a care and concern for anything at all. We might find ourselves loving - that is, appreciating and delighting, understanding and sympathising - with a family of dung beetles or a moss-covered tundra, someone else's child or the birth of a faraway star. An intensity of enthusiasm that we usually restrict to only one other nearby ego is now distributed more erratically and generously across the entire universe and all its life forms. GOD Spiritually minded people might at this point say that they can feel the presence of God inside them. This can be a particularly enraging remark for atheists, but it is more explicable than it sounds. What they may be trying to say is that, in certain states, they're able to experience some of the generosity, nobility of feeling, and selflessness traditionally associated with the divine. It isn’t that they promptly imagined themselves as bearded men on clouds, it means that the objectivity and tenderness we might ascribe to a divine force now seems, momentarily, to be within their grasp. FEARLESNESS Spiritual moods can usher in especially anxiety-free states. No longer so closely wedded to ourselves, we can cease to worry overly about what might happen to our puny and vulnerable selves in the always uncertain future. We may be ready to give up on some of our ego-driven, jealously guarded and pedantically held goals. We may never quite get to where we want to go, but we are readier to bob on the eddies of life, content to let events buffet us as they may. We make our peace with the laws of entropy. We may never be properly loved or appropriately appreciated. We’ll die - and that will be just fine. And yet at the same time, a particular gaiety might descend on us, for a huge amount of our energy is normally directed towards nursing our ego’s wounds and coping with what we deep down suspect is the utter indifference of other people. But that no longer seems like such a spectre we have to ward off and we can start raise our eyes and notice life in a way we never otherwise do. Our invisibility and meaninglessness is a given; we can now joyfully accept, rather than angrily or fearfully rage against. We don't quake in fear that we might not be a somebody, we delight and embrace in the full knowledge of our eternal nullity - and delight that, right now, that blossom looks truly enchanting in the field opposite. CONCLUSION We cannot persist at a spiritually elevated plane at all times. There will inevitably be bills to be paid and children to be picked up. But the claims of the ordinary world don't invalidate or mock our occasional access to a more elevated and disinterested zone. Spirituality has perhaps for too long been abandoned to its more overzealous defenders who have done it a disservice. It deserves to be explored most particularly by those who are by instinct most suspicious of it. A spiritual experience is neither ineffable nor absurd; the term refers rather to a deeply sustaining interval of relief from the burdens and blindness of being us.

I feel so spiritual while watching that I've stopped the video midway and getting rid of all the gadgets around. Thanks, SOL!

It really is 'relatedness', how we relate to nature, humans, ourselves and ideas that intersect and underlay them all but often there may be no words that can articulate thatness/thisness.

Wow! That was a thorough and enthralling introduction that you rarely encounter from anyone not deeply involved in a “spiritual” practice or tradition. Others might say spirituality is simply seeing the mind for the machine it is rather than habitually trying to be the mind. You become yourself instead of merely "knowing" (imagining) yourself. Applause!

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS!!!!!!!! You can not listen to it to understand it you absolutely have to relax and you will get every word! Thank youuuuu

Acceptance of the ways others experience and interpret life is such a beautiful mindset and skill to cultivate.

This mood is what had carried me through hell and back. I've only realized this recently. It was and is my strongest guide, my light at the end of the tunnel. I solve most of my problems when I go there. As I healed from the trauma, I started getting into this mood when I dream, and I get so many resolves and deep understandings just while sleeping, it's amazing. It makes me happy that I know nothing matters, that we are all part of the universe and the universe is part of us, and when we die, even though our consciousness dies, every part of the matter that made our bodies, that made our brains, every neuron, every signal between them, everything continues on, only in a different form, and it's beautiful. Although our life is fleeting, we truly are eternal. I want to use this state of existence and the gift of being human to see the world in a way only humans can, and after that, another adventure comes and I'll feel content and I'll let it carry me into the unknown. Only recently have I realized that this is what made me feel such love for everyone and everything around me, the feeling that I don't see often in others. That feeling is usually connected to religion and when I was an early teen, I had struggled with being unable to believe in god, despite madly wanting to. I was too logical for my own good and I was devasted. And now, I know why. I had to find my own spirituality, even though it was within me all along, wanting to be seen. I thought it had to die with my belief in god, and that's where I was mistaken. In this video, you've literally summed up the stuff that I found out by reflecting for the last few days, you said it so well that the pieces of information, still raw, just came together in a clear picture. Thank you for making this.

I used to be confused on whether spirituality and being religious are the same thing but now I understand. Great video ❤️❤️

I experience your definition of spirituality every single day for at least some time, and it is growing in its strength and time throughout the day. I do this through connecting with God through prayer and sacred literature - scripture - and then consciously returning to this sacred space through the day and especially as I am tempted toward resentments, lusts, and fears.

I'm an Omnist...my spiritual path is a smorgasbord buffet! 🎑The earth is my temple and the world is my congregation.

Thank you so much! Insightful, compassionate, deep and very well illustrated. I always appreciate the marriage of the visual with the thoughts and insights of School of Life presentations.

Be humble in your beliefs.

It's amazing how the two latest videos have connected with what I am experiencing in my understanding of how to transcend anxiety

Oh my goodness. Thanks a ton, for putting up this video. I appriciate rather applaud your effort to put this experiance of spirituality in words. I don't know how to express my heartfelt gratefulness for this content. Everything is spot on.

Loved this video. Being spiritual is the best, no matter what your faith is, whether it's one or many, separate or an amalgam.

Spirituality is the general term for the process of gnosis, the development of esoteric knowledge, as this is invaluable for self-regulation, self-control and ontological meaning.

We are the universe because we are in it.

Brilliant video. I always thought spirituality was a bunch of nonsense but I have another perspective now. I didn't realise immersing myself in a book or staring at a squirrel could be considered spiritual but I enioy that stuff a lot. It's a chance to transcend and escape our own selfish, confusing and limited realities.

I used to have a lot of anxiety to 'be somebody'....Now it is almost a certainty this will not be the case I have relaxed and found acceptance and simply don't care about a LOT of things I used to think were important...In fact I now go out of my way to be a nobody, no one has much expectations of you, no one is getting disappointed, it all adds up to a relief really.

You're talking with me deep inside where I'll be living eternal life by being space.

What an awesomely clear explanation of the most misunderstood but the most necessary aspect of human psychological landscape! Thank you so much for all your videos. I keep learning and relearning the wisdom needed to live life wisely by visiting your videos again and again and again...

Ich liebe diese Videos! ❤️👍🏻

For me it's storytelling, the experience of re-invoking the stories of the past or writing books gives you this escapist as well as emotionally profound inner feeling. I might live a boring existence but at least the inner life is rich. And my head movie is always great

That Be *Anywhere,do anything* touched my heart

It was long ago. I was learning in high school and life seemed to be hard) I was walking with my best friend. Just looked into the sky and thought it feels like being deep and like before I saw it flat. And it was a very intense feeling. I was happy and felt like understanding something really important at the same time it was almost impossible to formulate and bring into an ordinary life. It was like being high in someway) and since I never heard about something like that afterwards it felt like it can't be something real. My friend was the only one with whom I could talk about it. And I'm thankful to him for that. Even now formulating that seems strange and useless ) but watching this video I just remembered that evening that was very important to me. It helped me to realize there is something else from the material and practical stuff I was asked and taught by my parents and at school.

once again, such a fantastic video, well spoken, well crafted... always a pleasure to watch!

People don't "hate" spirituality. They hate the delusions that come with being religious and the damage it causes to mankind.

this instantly calmed me down, can I listen to it forever

With light from an inner glow, I crawled out of my head, thru a little hole (just big enough for one ego at a time) and into a… sun-drenched, light-filled, love is bursting world. There I communed with angels… they taught and I listened or… I taught and they listened. We got on together. Radiant was joy aplenty. Finally, there was THE question hanging in the air - to go or to stay? Then they convinced me to at least consider the bodhisattva vows. I’ll never forget the first time I was able to put my (our) skills together! Teddy said, “Life is a gift horse.”

I love God and I let his prescense guide my life

I would rather call it transcendence. It conveys the same meanings explained very well in this video, without the same preconceived religious connotations.

I consider myself spiritual by embracing myself as well as others gently and not trying to incessantly change everything around me. Also, by connecting with people I have felt a sense of unequivocal openness that is deeply satisfactory. 🌼

Ego hurt is something I can fix In a second but soul hurt is something that takes an decade to fix and I did it I feel so high and light now but good video.

This is amazing 😭 people in the future will benefit much

Spirituality is the science of the inner. Mater is only part of our existence. We are both, body(body and mind) and soul.

When you experience a spiritual moment, the flow of time doesn´t blind you any more.

One of the best School of Life videos I've seen. Sometimes I feel the School of Life takes a too atheistic and cold, rational approach to life. This explained spirituality excellently in my opinion, neither worshippingly or condescendingly. Thanks for that. It makes me feel more open to SOL ideas in other videos, knowing they are not coming from a totally materialist perspective. Well done :)

Spirituality will always be timeless whether man appreciates it or not. Men in general will always seek. The metaphysical yearnings of life will always make it more relevant than ever because somewhere and at some point in life, men will reject a world of materialistic accruals. By not focusing on the self all the time allows man to consider the cosmos around him, hopefully, making him realize that he is just a speck of dust in it. It doesn't necessarily yield an answer because the latter presupposes assumptions and pre-conceived notions. However, a brief experience can blossom into a subtle realization that the finite mind is not everything that one believes it is. It doesn't have to be associated with any deity nor culture nor belief. It is above that since it is "beyond man." And it takes humility and wisdom just the thought of mentally exploring it. Let alone being immersed in it.

this is simply well put :) Keep up doing god's work and thanks The School of Life channel!

Spirituality is everything to me. It helps me out of depression and grounds me again. My favourite teachers are Eckhart Tolle and Krishnamurti. 🌌💜

For me, spirituality is often that we have to perceive because it focuses your thoughts and senses of what is really needed in life other then just wanting things that aren't a necessity. It's on the basis of being true to yourself and being with yourself, seems like a loner tactic at first I know but this is what I picture it out to be. Which will then later on help you observe things more clearly and distinct scenarios on certain situations and even analyze how things are going. It makes you think outside of the box from whatever the choices you have been given while taking into consideration of your own. But what you just described in the video is pretty self explanatory, what a magnificent video to be honest. It's all really a sense of feeling, people might perceive it in different ways yes but that's up to themselves to figure out.

This is what I want to hear more of, investigation of the spiritual away from the influence of the militantly religious and militantly atheistic.

This video is a masterwork.

Your best ever I think. Profound thanks to you and the team.

Thank you for this video. I consider myself very spiritual and it has helped me in many ways. This has inspired me to make a spiritual video on my channel. Can't wait 😀

I needed this message today. I need to get back to my meditation.

This feels like a very nice sequel to the higher consciousness video :)

What a beautiful message! Speaks a lot to my experience over this past year

Here we are Here and now That's all there is Don't take it for granted ❤

Spirituality is not for cos you're bored. Its for when you're looking beyond the beyond

This channel is... Wow! 💚

Fantastic content.. so well articulated and full of wisdom. Rich language and a nonchalant way of expression that delivers the message with serene power. Great!

Very beautiful. I loved the imagery associated with the respective aspects. An eye opener and a guiding hand in the right way for the right people

01:42 AM , Thank you youtube 🤷‍♀️

Spirituality is about stepping of the stage and having the observer perspective, remembering of self prior to the role u act on the stage.

Far from being a nullity, we all play significant parts in a larger play we many times do not comprehend... someone near to you is glad you exist

Insightful video. I especially like the indication that the investigation of spirituality is usually most beneficial to those who dismiss its importance. Everyone can have access to spaciousness, peace and joy, but only if you think you can. I can recall "satori" experiences I've had where I could literally sense into trees as if I was communicating with them and them with me, or heal people of physical ailments just by looking at them. It was easy to chase these experiences after they ended, thinking I must be doing something wrong in that I couldn't do those things anymore, yet now knew them to be within human capacity. It took many, many years to come to a more integrated spiritual maturity in which such spiritual powers didn't distract me from the true spiritual grandeur of the most ordinary moments.

We are finite. Spirituality is trying to access the infinite. Before we grasp infinity we have to let go of the finite self. Thus, practicing spirituality is paradoxically grasping letting go.

Why it is so difficult to understand your words ? 😅

The nearest I come to anything remotely similar, personally. I have a reverence for creation and life. There aren't any word's that can describe our reality. No matter how it came into existence and our reality . is all inspiring.

this videos fkn dope!! i related to this so much, thank you for helping me get a better understanding and way to explain how spirituality makes me feel. 💜💜bless u all

I know it's not related to the video(which was great, thank you), but I would love a series on Composers/Music in general. You made a video on practically everything, literature, architecture, psychology, philosophy, etc. But I would really enjoy something about music😊. P. S. The animations are getting better every new video!

Any chance that we get more videos on philosophers?

This is an interesting piece in that it communicates well on a segment of the point of spirituality. Being short on time, I'd just mention that the cultural forms that spiritual development of the individual takes--as in the Hindu Satsung, Jewish Passover Seder, Catholic Confessional, and a vast many more approaches and the nuancing of how spirituality and healthy spiritual intimacy happens that I know from teaching and engaging mitzvot practice support groups on Jewish spiritual practices such as Lo TIkom, how to refrain from holding a grudge.

Thanks for teaching me this realistic approach towards spirituality.

I believe there are better words for what you call "Spirituality" but fine, let's call it that way :p

Beautiful video! I love how the representation of god resembles John Lennon.

This is how I've felt ever since I did truffles, I view the world differently without my ego in the way. At first I thought it was psychosis until I realised that my ego had died and that I was just in a higher state of consciousness.

Brilliant and beautiful - thank you!

*I think that this video was very interesting because it shows what questions people ask when they try to figure out the purpose of Spirituality. I think that the purpose of Spirituality is to connect us with ourselves and to develop in this life. One video is never enough to fully answer this question, so I will be creating more videos on this topic.*

The word spirituallity is so prone to misinterpretation that I prefer not to use it at all. In most cases what I see is people using it to claim or justify nonsense and unscientific gibberish.

Beautifully explained. Thank you.

Love your thoughts on the subject!