Mindfulness and spirituality

Here's a paragraph by Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book, Wherever You Go There You Are, that explores the word "spiritual" in a helpful way, I think:

Mindfulness allows everything to shine with the luminosity that the word "spiritual" is meant to connote. Einstein spoke of "that cosmic religious feeling" he experienced contemplating the underlying order of the physical universe. The great geneticist Barbara McClintock, whose research was both ignored and disdained by her male colleagues for so many years until it was finally recognized at age eighty with a Nobel Prize, spoke of "a feeling for the organism" in her efforts to unravel and understand the intricacies of corn genetics. Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes. It is the inner experience which counts. And you have to be there for it. All else is mere thinking.

Meditation is the path by which we learn to "be there". And how wonderful that everything is connected - that we're not isolated, cut off, separate! Remember that interconnectedness whenever the word "spiritual" comes to your attention. That too is spiritual practice.