Traditionally, society has tended to regard those who attend some type of religious service on a regular basis as spiritual. If you're among them, more power to you.

If you're not, that doesn't preclude your ability to be spiritual.

Actually, there are many ways to achieve such spirituality independent of regular attendance at religious services: volunteering, promoting goodwill, caring for the environment, and yes, being a good neighbor or good citizen. Conversely, you can be a devoted member of a church and have little spirituality in your life.

Being steeped in religious observance does not necessarily equate with being spiritual for many reasons. If you're inspired by the Sunday sermon, but never take the message to heart, i.e., go no further with it than the exit, then where is your spirituality? If charity and kindness are important to you, and your principle means of upholding these values is annually to write a handful of checks to a few charities, are you living up to your ideals?

Talk is Cheap

Do you confess your sins or promise to atone for your wrongdoings once a week, once a month, or once a year, but take no action to actually right your wrongs? Does merely saying that you're sorry and promising that you'll be better equate to being spiritual? The late Dr. Stephen Covey said, "You can't talk your way out of what you behaved your way into."

Does your religion teach that only members of your religion can enter heaven?  Does your religion teach that only its members are chosen, implying that everyone else is not? Everyone is chosen or nobody is.

Does your religion teach that women are inferior to men and are meant to be traded and sold like property? Does it teach that women are here to serve men, and that a man is allowed to have several wives, but a woman is not allowed to have several husbands?

Does your religion teach that only men may hold positions of power? Only men may be the high priests, the elders, the teachers, those held in esteem? Who do you suppose conceived of such a hierarchy?

Man Made Rules

These human-made, and, more specifically, man-made rules and restrictions are little more than bizarre historical aberrations which, over many centuries, have become institutionalized. Today, such aberrations are accepted by hundreds of millions of devotees who not only fail to stop and examine such doctrine, but can't even contemplate questioning such notions.