You can't turn on a television, read a magazine, or listen to a celebrity interview these days, without hearing it..."I like to consider myself a spiritual person." Oprah has given the term to a generation of women, and California might as well adopt it as their state religion.

I get what people are trying to say: I don't like organized religion, or necessarily agree with the concepts put forth by the major world religions. I consider myself a good person, and have a belief in a higher power. I try to take the best concepts from the religions of the world, and live them out in my daily life.

That's all fine, I guess. Except for the fact that all of the world's main religions speak of an afterlife. Whether we are speaking about Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam, you have to confront what happens after a dirt nap. (You could rank Atheism as a religion as well, as belief in nothing, and no afterlife still counts as a belief system.)

The big 3(Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) give you one shot at the afterlife. You get heaven or hell, one up or down vote. All of them claim to have a lock on who goes to heaven. Most people understand this, and most are willing to take a hard look at this life, and make a choice regarding which pool they're jumping in.

The spiritual person has decided they are not jumping in. They're going to take a select portion of water from each pool, and pour it into a pool of their own making. Usually, the spiritual person has adapted some form of reincarnation as their afterlife, so there is no hell to be avoided. There are only higher and lower levels of consciousness. If they do have a concept of heaven, the view is generally that everyone goes there. This idea is drawn from the "All rivers flow into the ocean." argument.

Spirituality offers freedom from religous conflict, a peaceful coexistence with all religions, and a modernized view of morality. What's not to like? It sounds nice. To that I would say "Plenty."

Let's start off with sin, error, misdeeds, stuff you definitely know you screwed up big time. The Qu'ran, Jewish Law, and Christian bible have much to say concerning all things. At the very least, the put forth the idea of flawed humanity. Spirituality believes the best in people. We are all ascending together. Sure, we have our flaws, but humanity is basically good.

The problem is that history has proven humanity is not basically good. It has even proven that people involved in major religions are not very good, in fact, sometimes they do really evil things. The Old Testament(or Law and Prophets, should you prescribe to Judaism's paradigm) speaks of horrible attrocities committed by people God chose to lead. King David, venerated in Christianity and Judaism, committed adultery, killed the woman's husband, and allowed troops to die as a result of his selfishness. Pretty awful.

God also forgives David, when he asks for it, but judges his family based on his sin. Sin and redemption are huge themes on the Judeo-Christian ethics. The only major disagreement they have is whether the Messiah is coming or has already been.

Those who subscribe to spirituality need no savior. There's nothing to be saved from. The only person who you need to ask forgiveness of is yourself. You are your own redeemer. This is the problem. Everyone has a conscience, and instinctively knows what is right and wrong. Everyone always has the impulse to do the wrong thing. Sometimes those impulses are overcome, sometimes they are not. We all know they are there.

For the people who turn to spirituality, the quest for truth must be paradoxically paired with the denial thereof. Some people take up Spirituality as a way to avoid the stigma of more fundamentalist adherents of their religion of choice. Some just do it because it is popular. The main thing is that they avoid persecution for what little faith they have.

Back to the original issue: What do you do if you are wrong? What if you choose the reject the reward of heaven, or the punishment of hell as prescribed by the big 3. Even if you dismiss their concepts as an archetypal projection of some vast human consciousness, you have to admit that there is some solid concept from which they drew their "mythologies".

You have to come to the conclusion that some deity you may, or may not know will judge you for your actions on the earth. Whether that justice is based on your allegiance to that Deity in this life, a la Islam, or the punishment has been taken for you by the Deity, vis-a-vis Christianity, the judgement is coming. If these religions are incorrect about sin and punishment, and all paths do lead to God, then their practioners lose nothing in the afterlife.

Those who believe in Spirituality are the ones who stand to lose eternally, after not standing for any belief system in this life.