Spirituality — Spoken or Felt

Spoken Spirituality

Some spiritual teachings and teachers help us understand ourselves by giving us words and concepts. Their teachings often feel emotionally supportive, intellectually reassuring, and foundational. People like to share them, talk about them, and say, “Yes, this is me too. This is what I believe.”

Well-known teachers who work in this way include Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and Marianne Williamson. Their work helps people orient themselves, reflect, and build language for what is happening and where they are headed.

Spiritual teachings that work through ideas and explanations tend to suit cultures and people who like to talk things through, define themselves, and understand where they stand — the Western world. These teachings travel well through books (especially socially-sanctioned best-sellers), in discussion, and via social media sharing. They give people meaningful spiritual language that they can use to identify themselves.

Felt Spirituality

Other spiritual teachings help us to feel our way back into ourselves. Much is left unsaid. Not a lot is explained. They don’t give us many concepts to hold onto. Instead, they work through tone, presence, vibration, and silence. Often we can’t easily say what they’ve done — only that something has softened or changed inside us.

This kind of spirituality is less often shared or discussed because it doesn’t give us language to stand on. It asks us to be without explanation. There is no position to take, no insight to display, no sense of progress to claim. That can feel unsettling. But for some, it feels like home.

Well-known figures whose work touches this quieter mode include Thích Nhất Hạnh, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and the poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Mary Oliver. Their work is received inwardly rather than talked about outwardly because it bypasses explanation.

Apart from transmission through presence, this felt mode often does its greatest work in books and other writings. A book has no personality to manage, no authority to perform, and no relationship to maintain. It can sit quietly, speak without defending itself, and allow the reader to meet it inwardly and privately. Texts such as A Course in Miracles and the Tao Te Ching function this way. The teaching is carried by the work itself, rather than by a visible individual.

The felt, vibrational, or frequency mode works against positioning, explanation, and personal authority. It doesn’t invite following or identification. It asks for attention, sincerity, and a willingness to listen. For this reason, it often comes through writers, poets, artists, dancers, and musicians. Known spiritual teachers who live and speak from this mode do not present themselves as authorities, but allow energy, frequency, and stillness to do the heavy lifting.

Felt forms of spirituality don’t help us articulate who we are. In fact, they often do the opposite. They loosen our need to define ourselves at all. Because of this, they can feel uncomfortable or even boring. There is nothing to hold onto. But for some, this quietness feels deeply wonderful. Nothing needs to be explained. Nothing needs to be agreed upon or disagreed with. 

Many people need words to find their way, but the most exciting journey happens when the words fall away.

When words loosen their grip
and slip between our fingers,
slipping, slipping,
we know not where.

No map to guide,
no ladder to climb,
no treasure to claim,
no prize to gain.

Most turn back,
worried for their life.
No food, no protection,
no assurance of direction.

Others step forward
and feel the relief
of not needing to know,
trusting that the way is worn.

For the journey begins
when the map is gone
and there is nowhere else
to go but on.