A significant part of being human is expressing the passions of the soul as is often defined by the term spirituality. God has place an inherent appetite for matters beyond the realm of the phenomenal, yet as a fallen human race we often strive to meaningfully deal with these desires of divinity with meaningless pursuits of personal pleasure. So instead of pursuing the bond of deep love we pursue the acquaintance of casual sex. Instead of pursuing unhindered friendship we pursue manipulation with associates. Instead of thoughtful contemplation we pursue the mindlessness of entertainment. The root of these things stems from our basic fundamental flaw of self-love and self-absorption. Spirituality, a necessary pursuit, has lost its beauty in American culture. We fall prey to the latest spiritual fad, the marketing of million dollar corporations, and as a result we find ourselves empty at the end of the spiritual shopping spree, thus Spirituality is coined as an American phrase that means simply "get in touch with yourself." We are taught that "we," that is "myself," must be the pursuit of the spiritual or divine, after all, if we don't know ourselves, then we don't know anything. Yet, amidst the plethora of opinion on the nebulous topic of the spiritual, I have found that deep spirituality can only begin when a person finds themselves surrounded with intentionally loving individuals which form a simplistic community. America says find "yourself," while God says "find other people." I don't know why God has created us this way, but I can see it from experience. I have friends who have found life to be cumbersome and the spiritual void of significance, but, oddly enough, they have failed to invest purposely in the lives of those outside their inner-world of self. I may be speculating, but I would bet significant odds that deeply spiritual people are first deeply relational people. Personally, I can remember a very dark time the first two years of my life in seminary. I "fell into myself." I felt like I was worthless only because I had valued my life upon what I had deemed worthwhile. I felt lonely because people were not knocking down my door wondering what I was about or trying to get to know me. I must be honest, I did have a lot of good guy friends in the dorm, but men cannot share these feelings with other men, so I felt, once again, the power of darkness in self cloud my realistic view of the world. I struggled with life and purity and failed miserably to maintain my personal integrity in several facets of life. Life was indeed dark, and the cycle only continued to grow stronger, it was as if I was sucking myself down in the guilt of my perceived failures, and all the while I had no one to encourage me or see me through. I couldn't admit to my friends, let alone myself that I was falling, and falling fast. I wanted all those in my life to believe I was strong, capable, even superior to most other they had ever come into contact. It was a deeply spiritless time, a time of dryness, a time of depression, a time of self, and willful ignorance of the power of honest self-evaluation and vulnerability. Indeed, I believed, in contradiction to the phrase "no man is an island," I was an ISLAND - unreachable without need of being reached, self-supportive without need of dependence. I say all this to be honest with myself at this point in my life. My deepest time of hurt and struggle was my void-of-life time of spiritual vitality in relationship to other individuals or a community of friends. I have noticed a significant rebirth in my spiritual desire with an increased network of meaningful relationships. I do not have the answers to all the questions on the topic of spirituality, but I do know that spirituality of the American sort is a spirituality of SELF which is no spirituality at all.