The fourth dimension, the Spiritual Dimension, is widely discussed among people, physicians, communities, and organizations involved in the healthcare industry. To understand it, we need to understand the term ‘Spirituality’ first. Defining spirituality is a challenging task, as it encompasses multiple definitions and is surrounded by complexities and ambiguities. We generally connect our spirituality with our religion, faith, or belief system. This is not entirely incorrect, but it is partially correct. To understand this, we need to know that both religion and spirituality are the products of a highly evolved human thought process.
The human brain has complex biochemical mechanisms, and our various thought processes are the result of those reactions that produce thoughts. It is our thoughts that make us human. Spirituality is the product of the spiritual thought process, and religion is the product of the religious thought process; both have many similarities. It is true that every one of us wants to realize our spirituality and for that purpose, we follow religions, gurus, rituals, and belief systems, this is a fundamental difference between religiosity and spirituality, the latter being the aim of the former being the path. Therefore, religion and spirituality are not the same thing.
All religions claim to provide spiritual realization to their followers by instructing them to obey their gods, observe their practices, and perform their rituals. Religions, with all their positive and negative religious thoughts, played a significant role in the creation of humanity with human values at its core. Every religion assures its followers that it will help in attaining a spiritual dimension; in that way, this assurance helps them in attracting and maintaining their follower base. So, we can say ‘spirituality’ is necessary for the existence of religions. After the scientific and industrial revolutions, the scientific thought process has played a significant role in the formulation of the collective human thought process. We can see a substantial change in our understanding of spirituality, humanity, science, religions, and their interactions. Current scientific theories of evolution and quantum physics have created more modern versions of world views regarding spirituality and religious philosophies.
With this background, when we explore spirituality, we can see it at the core of humanity and human values. It appeared as a highly evolved human thought that has all the positive ideas that make the common base for every religion and belief system to exist, and finally makes interfaith and inter-religious dialogue possible. It helps in enhancing positive thoughts and controlling and modulating negative thoughts on the premises of belief and social systems. So, to make it simple, less complicated, and less ambiguous, spirituality can be defined as “All positive thoughts of humanity and human values which have the enhancing properties for positive thoughts and correcting and healing properties for the negative thoughts in the complex ecosystem of human thought processes.”
Positive thoughts affect physical, mental, and social dimensions of our health. It happens because of the evolutionary process of millions of years, which created our biochemistry to release the biochemicals that produce a positive impact on our mental and physical health by reducing stress, increasing happiness, regulating blood pressure, and elevating our mood. Our social and interpersonal relations automatically get a boost with positive thoughts, and it finally improves our social and professional life. While negative thoughts have just the opposite effect on our biochemistry and physiology, such as a sad mood, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, irritability, stress, and anxiety. In all, we feel a sense of well-being and happiness with positive thoughts.
Spiritual thoughts, by their inherent properties of creating positive thoughts and healing and correcting negative thoughts, helped in keeping the thought ecosystem in our mind on the positive side. This is the reason that the spiritual dimension is vital for our health and well-being in all aspects of our daily lives.
From a public health point of view, it is crucial to understand this simple understanding of spirituality and promote positive spiritual health. We can see the complexities and ambiguities created around this concept, and most of the time, they are intentional for various vested interests, since all of us want to realize our spirituality, so it is easy to be an easy target of specific vested interests. We can see such scams surfacing from time to time in the media. People need to understand that all positive thoughts in their belief systems, all positive ideas of humanity and human values like love, respect, tolerance, helpfulness, kindness, etc., are Spiritual Thoughts, and to encourage them at the individual level, in society, and in collective humanity is spirituality. Spiritual Health is merely enhancing the positive thoughts, correcting and healing negative thoughts, and getting all the benefits of our positive thoughts on all the dimensions of our health. As a human being, it is very natural to have negative thoughts, but this simple definition of Spirituality can help us to heal our negative thoughts by enhancing positive thoughts. This will also help people to prevent themselves from the trap of vested interests, which is not suitable for overall public health.
Nature has created human beings by embedding the codes in their DNA through the journey of their evolutionary process, so that their physiology and biochemistry will respond with all good results on their health, happiness, and well-being. Simultaneously, all the negative thoughts of religion, culture, science, and philosophies will have all adverse effects. The higher notions of spirituality helped in controlling the conflicts between individuals, groups, societies, religions, and nations to promote humanity and human values by enhancing the positive thoughts of peace, tolerance, happiness, helpfulness, kindness, and well-being.
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