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Can Spirituality Be Relational, but Not Personal?

Can Spirituality Be Relational, but Not Personal?

Last updated on: December 18, 2025 at 10:12 am by Larry Jordan

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Can Spirituality Be Relational, but Not Personal? 2025-12-18T10:12:00-06:00 Larry Jordan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What if our spirituality is like our connection to music or nature?

Last week, I participated in a Zoom call at the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality (CNRS), which Jim Palmer founded. CNRS expanded its offerings recently. It is an engaging community with relevant and timely content. Danu Poyner facilitated the Zoom call. He is the founder of Grokkist, a learning community for curious and caring people who live outside the lines.

Connecting with music is like entering into relation with another living individual. Image from StockCake/Ai-generated, in the public domain

Connecting with music is like entering into a relationship with another living individual. Image from StockCake/Ai-generated, in the public domain

Danu described a grokkist as a generalist, a polymath, a principled rebel, or a Renaissance person. Sometimes, a grokkist is a grokkist by nature, like a neurodivergent person who sees differently. On the call, I realized that I’m a bit of a grokkist person. I am someone who connects the dots, not someone who colors within the lines or stays within the box. This post is a grokkist post.

My book is certainly a grokkist book. If you want to do a deep dive into one subject, such as Christianity, Eastern religions, mysticism, or quantum physics, I can recommend some great books. But if you want to connect the dots between Christianity and other religions or between the experiential and the intellectual or between religion and science, then you should read The Way.

Art, Music, and Writing are Relational

This week, I talked with a good friend who is a musician. He was explaining that, for him, music is a spiritual experience. Other friends who are musicians have said the same thing. For them, music can be deeply moving. Sometimes, it can feel like the music is playing the musician. When musicians play together, they can create a synergy that they could not create alone.

Similarly, other friends who are accountants or financial analysts have said that mathematics can be a spiritual experience. As someone who has swooned over an elegant spreadsheet, I know that. Math and music can produce a flow state. This is like hitting a well-placed tennis ball or painting a well-crafted painting or writing a well-told story, more by instinct than intention.

Meanwhile, I am reading a grokkist book called The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist. McGilchrist challenges the notion that our analytical and logical left brains dominate our creative and intuitive (grokkist) right brains. He suggests that, without the right brain, our world would seem dull, flat and mechanistic.

He writes, “I believe the essential difference between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere is that the right hemisphere pays attention to the Other, whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, with which it sees itself in profound relation (emphasis added). It is deeply attracted to, and given life by, the relationship (emphasis added), the betweenness that exists with this other.”

He continues, “This kind of knowing may help us to understand, rather than simply to amass information about, a host of things in the world, animate and inanimate…. The approach to music is like entering into relation (emphasis added) with another living individual, and research suggests that understanding music is perceived as similar to knowing a person…. In an earlier book, I argued that works of art—music, poems, paintings, great buildings—can be understood only if we appreciate that they are more like people than texts, concepts, or things.”

What if Our Spirituality is Like Our Connection to Music or Nature?

Next week, I will write another grokkist post based on this one. “Spirituality” is the connection to something greater than ourselves. In the Western world, many think that connection is personal. This type of spirituality involves a personal connection between a personal self and a personal God. Instead, what if our spirituality is like our impersonal connection to music or nature?

To me, spirituality necessarily involves connection. It does NOT necessarily involve religion. Where do you find spirituality? In my opinion, we find our spirituality where we find our connection. This might be in devotion, knowledge or wisdom, meditation or prayer, or service. Or it might be in community, family or friends. Or it might be in art, athletics, math, music, nature or writing.

When we realize that connection is relational, not personal, we can find impersonal connection. That is, connection originates from our True Self, something more eternal than our egoic self. Further, when we open ourselves to impersonal connection, we can accept Ultimate Reality in its impersonal essence, a deeper and greater Mystery than our egoic projections of personal gods.

To be continued…

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The Way received a 2024 Nautilus Book Award.

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About Larry Jordan

Larry Jordan is a follower of Jesus with a Zen practice. He wrote “The Way,” informed by the Eastern religions, the mystics, and the quantum physicists. "The Way" won a 2024 Nautilus Book Award. You can read more about the author here.

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