What do you do when you want a spiritual component to your life, but it’s just not there?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

I was raised in a Protestant church, and stopped believing those conventional teachings years and years ago. I’m a concrete, rational person, and I place high value in scientific inquiry, repeatable hypotheses, and the like. Still, I consider spirituality to be a really important part of life. It’s useful for me to think of spirituality in one container and rationality in another container. They don’t mix, one isn’t hierarchically above or below the other—they’re measured with different systems and units.

I have lots of theories about spirituality, ideas I like to consider, and things that I hope to be true. But I don’t really feel any of these things. It’s more like wish projection…”wouldn’t it be neat if, when you die, you find out that you were really part of a larger collective….”. So I’m attracted to some ideas, some notions, but I don’t really feel them. And I’m not even looking for proof, whatever constitutes proof—as I said above, I don’t think this kind of stuff is measurable. But it would be nice to have some sense that you’re headed in the right direction, that this notion is right and that one, not so much. Further, it would be nice to cultivate beliefs that made me feel as though I were “spiritually advancing”, something that feeds a part of my life and is beneficial.

But I really just don’t feel anything like that. Spirituality is hypothetical to me, abstract. I know that in churches (at least the Protestant ones I attended), there are entire programs dedicated to getting people excited about church again. I’m not part of that system anymore, but I’m wondering what you (you being defined as a group that appears to have largely separated itself from standard organized religion) do when you don’t feel anything from your spiritual practice. Do you wait for inspiration, or do you take a more active approach, doing something to kick-start your lack of feeling? What do you do to help yourself remember that’s it’s more important than bills from the next pay cycle, more important than whatever is happening at work?

Thank you.