In Naturalistic Humanism the word “spiritual” refers to experiencing reality in a way that connects us to a larger, more cosmic picture, transcending our ordinary day to day experiences — it does not reference anything supernatural. Occurring in a variety of cognitive, emotional, and perceptual states, all naturalistic spiritual experiences involve a beneficial momentary interruption of our everyday thoughts. Naturalistic spiritual experiences offer us valuable insight to maximize our human potential and inspire pro-social behavior.
Most of the time our minds are occupied with solving problems, overcoming challenges, achieving goals, dealing with relationships, as well as experiencing fears, desires, joys, and frustrations. This mental activity may be expressed as an internal stream of consciousness, a monolog, a dialog, or a visualization and its primary focus tends to be on ourselves.
Our self-oriented thoughts can be incessant and fully consuming. Naturalistic spiritual experiences involve those relatively rare moments that our self-oriented focus is momentarily interrupted and our awareness shifts to the world around us.