The coronavirus pandemic has allowed some to explore their faith outside of routine practice or pressure of attending religious institutions for worship.
Religious institutions shouldn’t control how someone practices spirituality outside a place of worship. Students don’t need to be a member of organized religion to have a fruitful and meaningful spiritual life.
With that in mind, it’s difficult learning to balance my spirituality with my religion without feeling conflicted.
Religion often shames its followers for questioning their faith, while spirituality encourages individual ability to explore not only people’s preferred religion but their significance in the universe.
You can be spiritual through daily activities, whether that means self-reflection or meditating while doing activities including watering plants, watching the sunset or even drinking a cup of coffee.
“Practicing mindfulness and meditating has been really helpful over the course of the pandemic,” said Lauryn Carter, an applied nutrition and food sciences junior in a phone interview. “Sometimes I just play music and drift off to analyze life.”
My younger years consisted of sitting on a church bench most Sundays, but when the pandemic began the significant shift threw a wrench in my routine. A year later, I have come to better understand the essence of my personal belief system balanced between religion and spirituality.
Andrea Chavez, a justice studies junior, has done tarot card readings over FaceTime for my household multiple times during the pandemic.
“I started getting into astrology and tarot and all that kind of stuff and I thought it was really interesting at the beginning of middle school,” Chavez said. “My family has a history of curanderos, but because of the church, it was kind of shut down.”
Curanderos are healers who use folk remedies that blend religious beliefs, faith and prayer with the use of herbs, massage and other traditional methods of healing, according to Encyclopedia.com.
Curanderismo, or the practice used by curanderos, is also said to be the result of Spanish colonization and the imposition of Catholic rituals such as prayer, combined with native folk medicine using herbs and oils, according to the American Cancer Society.
“The healing properties are oils, herbs [and] natural things from the ground,” Chavez said. “Then most of these spells are really just manifestations, what you speak into the universe does have a really big impact.”
She was inspired and encouraged to explore her spirituality by a gifted curandera who became her close friend after she helped her family through difficult times.
People must overcome biases and personal fears about spiritual healing practices.
A 2010 study from the Journal of Community Health Nursing found Western therapists often misdiagnose clients who practice Indigenous healing systems, such as curanderismo.
Society tends to demonize those who practice culturally influenced spiritual customs. Yet large corporations have ironically capitalized and continuously appropriated ancient practices and sacred objects.
Indigenous people were sentenced to death for sage burning, a spiritual cleansing process. It was illegal for Native Americans to use sage until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 was established, according to a Nov. 13, 2019 Fashionista article.
Now huge companies including Urban Outfitters profit from selling kits with culturally significant objects such as white sage and Palo Santo wood sticks to people without knowledge of their importance.
Spirituality holds different meanings to different people, but it’s important to be mindful of respecting others by not only acknowledging their beliefs, but also not reinventing deeply-rooted cultural practices into trendy waves.
The difference between religion and spirituality is not about what you believe, but your attitude toward life and how you treat the Earth.
Intentions are powerful and exerting positive energy through affirmations and manifestation is effective in developing a higher sense of self.
“I don’t think people realize the power everyone has and how simply speaking things into existence and exerting good energy will help you get through,” Chavez said.
Throughout the pandemic, I’ve experienced a deeper understanding of the way I practice religion influenced by cultural and spiritual beliefs originating from curanderismo.
Going to church every week doesn’t make you a good person and neither does discrediting spiritual practices. What matters is how you treat others and your surroundings.
