Do you feel drawn to spirituality but find traditional religion doesn’t quite fit?

If so, you’re not alone. An increasing number of adults now identify as spiritual but not religious, and the number is growing. Being spiritual but not religious isn’t about rejecting organized faith or picking a smorgasbord approach to spirituality. It’s about cultivating a direct, personal relationship with something bigger than yourself without requiring institutional intermediaries.

It’s a path that embraces the universal truths woven throughout all the world’s traditions without requiring us to fit into any one particular box. We’re not Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or any traditional religious path. We have spiritual freedom and a sense of knowing that arises from within rather than from without.

Like many people who identify as being spiritual but not religious, I wasn’t someone who left organized religion. I simply never had it.

I grew up in a home that didn’t value religion and went to church maybe a handful of times. As a young adult, I got married in a church after taking the required classes and felt like an imposter the entire time. I had my children baptized when they were born, though it’s a little embarrassing to admit that I did it out of fear. What would happen if I didn’t? Was I a bad person for not believing in God? What kind of parent didn’t bring their children to church?

By midlife, my spiritual life was like a desert. Barren. I had no idea what I believed and hadn’t given it much thought.

And then the perfect storm. I retired from nursing, my children were launched, and I was travelling the world. Living the dream. And then out of nowhere, though the soul hunger had been slowly creeping up on me, the Universe orchestrated a dark night of the soul. This was a huge problem because, at the time, I didn’t know I had a soul and had certainly never heard of the dark night of the soul.

It was a disorienting experience to navigate without a frame of reference. How could I understand what was happening to me? I had barely set foot in a church and was living in a spiritual desert as far as conscious awareness went.

That’s when soul hunger drew me into a genuine curiosity about the mystery of life, the universe, and how I could be of service. The feeling that something was missing was actually my compass pointing toward deeper meaning.

In many ways, it was a gift that I had no spiritual or religious background. I was a blank slate, able to discern as an adult what felt true for me rather than stripping away layers of inherited belief. My filter was my own soul. I went from spirituality barely on my radar to being guided by spiritual principles in every aspect of my life. And as Lao Tzu says:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

Perhaps that’s exactly as it should be.

Two Spiritual Paths: Surface and Depth

As I continued on this path, I began to notice that not everyone who identifies as spiritual but not religious is walking in the same direction.

One path is the new age spiritual path with its promise of love and light, if you use the right crystals, beat the right drum, say the correct affirmation, and balance your chakras. It leans toward feeling good, thinking positively, and surrounding ourselves with things that feel uplifting. And while there’s nothing wrong with any of that, it can keep us from touching the deeper layers of who we are.

And then there’s another path. One that asks more of us. One that gently, and sometimes not so gently, invites us to look at the parts of ourselves we’ve avoided, to sit with discomfort, to grow in ways that aren’t always easy.

As we explore both, we begin to sense that the true spiritual path is the one that takes us deeper. And while deeper is often more challenging, it is where we find more meaning and genuine moments of joy.

Our deep spiritual path lives in the messy arguments with our partner. The person at work who rubs us the wrong way. The soul-sapping job. The teenager is keeping us up late worrying. The seasons of loss and disorientation. I believe in a spirituality that is grounded in everyday life, one that takes us deeper and not higher, and through that process fulfils our soul’s need to grow and evolve into who we actually are.

When Inherited Spiritual Beliefs Feel Too Small

Not everyone arrives at the spiritual but not religious path from a place of no background. Many of the people I work with have a different struggle entirely.

They grew up with religious dogma and beliefs that no longer nourish them or align with what their soul is saying. They’re questioning a spirituality that diminishes their life force rather than expanding it, living with traditional frameworks that don’t honour their need to integrate both the masculine and feminine.

I hear people sharing their confusion about sensing they have outgrown the box of their inherited beliefs. They face the fear of leaving communities, shedding fear-based beliefs, and finding their own path, often in the dark, with a profound sense of feeling alone.

For many, this becomes their own dark night of the soul. A process that is painful and yet gives birth to a new vision and a more personal relationship with spirituality. Like all transformations, something has to die for something new to be born. A difficult time of living in the void, knowing we can’t go back and are not yet able to see a way forward.

What is so mysterious is that something in the Universe signals when it’s time to make these radical transformations. It gives us signs that we’ve drifted too far from ourselves and that it’s time to wake up.

And our soul doesn’t care what path we’re on, religious, spiritual, or, as in my case, the path of no path. The only thing that truly matters to the soul is that we follow a path that is uniquely ours and resonates at the core of our being.

A New Vision of Spirituality Is Emerging

I believe we are living through a time when old religious institutions are breaking down, much like in any dark night of the soul, things that confine us must be dismantled for something new to emerge.

This new spirituality brings forth the best of ancient wisdom while honouring our direct connection to the divine. You don’t need to go through an intermediary or ask someone else for forgiveness. You go directly to the source.

This isn’t about rejecting religion. It’s about recognizing that for many of us, the institutional containers have become too small for our expanding spiritual understanding.

If you identify as spiritual but not religious, know that your seeking is valid and valuable. The hunger for something deeper, the sense that something is missing, the curiosity about life’s bigger questions, these aren’t flaws to fix. They are invitations to grow. If you’d like to understand what a practical path forward looks like, the 4 Keys to Inner Peace is a natural place to begin.

What resonates most with you about the spiritual but not religious path? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.