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Spirituality is, in a narrow sense, a concern with matters of the spirit, however that may be defined; but it is also a wide term with many available readings. It may include belief in supernatural powers, as in religion, but the emphasis is on personal experience. It may be an expression for life perceived as higher, more complex or more integrated with one's worldview, as contrasted with the merely sensual.

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Mary Magdalene in prayer.

Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate, commonly with a sequence of words, with a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshiping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing sins, or to express one's thoughts and emotions. The words of the prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person's words.

The great spiritual traditions offer a wide variety of devotional acts. There are morning and evening prayers, graces said over meals, and reverent physical gestures. Some Christians bow their heads and fold their hands. Native Americans dance. Some Sufis whirl. Hindus chant. Orthodox Jews sway their bodies back and forth. Quakers keep silent.

The act of prayer is attested in written sources as early as 5000 years ago. Some anthropologists believe that the earliest intelligent modern humans practiced something that we would recognize today as prayer.

Praying has many different forms. Prayer may be done privately and individually, or it may be done corporately in the presence of fellow believers. Prayer can be incorporated into a daily "thought life," in which one is in constant communication with a God. Some people pray throughout all that is happening during the day and seek guidance as the day progresses. There can be many different answers to prayer, just as there are many ways to interpret an answer to a question, if there in fact comes an answer. Some may experience audible, physical, or mental epiphanies. If indeed an answer comes, the time and place it comes is considered random.

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Glossary

• Bhakti: A Tamil or Sanskrit term from Hinduism that means intense devotion expressed by action (service)...
• Spirit: The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath...
• Yoga: (Sanskrit योग, "union") is a family of spiritual practices that originated in India, where it is seen primarily as a means to enlightenment (or bodhi)...

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The Dome of the Rock is sacred in the faith of Islam. It is located in the city of Jerusalem, which is a holy place for many people.

Did you know

• From the point of view of the mother psychology, meditation can induce — or is itself — an altered state of consciousness. However, many religious people would challenge the assumption that such mental states (or any other visible result) are the "goal" of meditation. Not just is this the goal, but in fact this meditative state is the natural state of consciousness while our 'normal' everyday state is the altered state. In fact the goals of meditation are quite varied, and range from spiritual enlightenment, to the transformation of attitudes, to better cardiovascular health.

• In Hinduism and its spiritual systems of yoga and in some related eastern cultures, as well as in some segments of the New Age movement -- and to some degree the distinctly different New Thought movement -- a chakra is thought to be an energy node in the human body.

• Cosmology is the study of the universe in its totality and by extension man's place in it. Though the word cosmology is itself of fairly recent origin, first used in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis (1730), the study of the universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion.

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