A Basic Definition of Spirituality (of True Faith)

[Belacqua]

But the more you learn stuff, the more opposing ideas, different theories, and different approaches, more traditional vs. more modern approaches and/or ideas in the light of new observations there are. This is true for most science and/or disciplines. This doesn’t make anything less enjoyable or less profitable but that’s just the way it is.

I'd say this is one of the more important reasons for learning stuff. It's a fact of life that there are opposing ideas, theories, and conclusions about just about everything, and when we settle into one viewpoint while condemning all the others we are closing ourselves off. This doesn't mean that we have to accept everything, but that valuable lessons can come from any direction. 

Spirituality on the other hand is when someone give you a set of methods. If you can apply these methods in a correct manner, you get to know Knowledge itself.

I looked up "spirituality" on Wikipedia just now, and I was amused to see that one researcher identified "twenty-seven explicit definitions among which "there was little agreement"." So it seems the word can mean different things to different people. 

Your definition might be as good as any, but I'm not understanding it very well so far. 

You say that the method you're thinking of can give you "Knowledge itself." But as I understand it, knowledge is always knowledge of something. You can't have content-free knowledge. So the obvious question is: knowledge of what? 

"Know thyself" is always good advice. Is this the kind of thing you're thinking of? 

The fact that you say "Knowledge itself," rather than just "knowledge" indicates that you're thinking of some kind of pure, final level of knowledge. I am skeptical that we can ever have any knowledge that is unmediated by interpretation of one kind or another. Simply to be aware that one has knowledge is to have achieved a certain kind of interpretation. 

So the idea that there is a "true knowledge of our Inner Nature" perhaps needs more explication. Is the Inner Nature something unchangeable and given from birth, like Aristotle's concept of a human essence? Or is it something one develops and learns through spiritual practices? 

Intellect can be a very sharp tool indeed. Normally people think it isn't sufficient for spirituality. 

We may be quite strong and energetic individuals but scores of people (or groups of people) have lived a miserable life, unable to reach their goals simply because their timing wasn’t right (like the painter Vincent Van Gogh for instance).

I'm reminded of the quote from Stephen Jay Gould:

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

Dogmas and repetitive rituals are simply outdated.

Surely it depends on which dogma and which ritual. Some are outdated. Some are still useful -- though I agree that when people believe something these days they are reluctant to use the word "dogma." 

It seems to me that new dogmas and new rituals might be useful for a lot of people.