The personalized spirituality principles of the older Religion 1.5 forms along with Evolution Spirituality's open-source spirituality processes empowers and recognize the uniqueness of every individual and also adapts to each person's needs at each stage of their lives.

The personal spirituality of the older religion 1.5 allows for people as they are, helps them to take the natural next step for their individualized spiritual development. It does not require that they adapt to some rigid or less-than-rational set of ideas or ideals based on someone else's authority or ideas.

The open-source spirituality processes of Evolution Spirituality make the principles of Religion 1.5's personal spirituality work even better. (More will be said about the open-source spirituality addition in the following links.)

Please feel free to take any of the ideas for expanding your personal spirituality that you find on the following pages of this online booklet to evolve your personal spirituality. You are the one who self-selects, sequences, and uses the processes, wisdom, and tools that you find on the Universe Spirit website in the way that will work best for your current life conditions, stage of spiritual development, and understanding.

There are many reasons that an evolutionary new form of personal spirituality is growing rapidly. Many of today’s religiously inclined individuals:

1. value their personal spiritual freedom and autonomy more than ever. They want to be free to integrate the best of today’s rational science, philosophy and art with their spiritual values. They want to integrate the most useful and life-affirming as well as the most inclusive and universal qualities from ALL worldviews, (pre-modern, traditionalist, modernist, postmodernist and integral) no matter what religious "ism," or culture they come from.
2. don’t want to be blindly forced into accepting incomplete, inaccurate or mythic, or authoritarian-based religious worldviews (traditionalist dogma/doctrine) and no-longer-applicable solutions from religions created for realities, problems, and worldviews more appropriate to premodern, mythic civilization.
3. want spiritual and religious value-based solutions relevant to the global civilization and problems we face in today’s modern, postmodern, and newly emerging integral world.
    
4. want to prune, customize or re-energize their religion by picking, integrating, and choosing ideas and practices from the most life-affirming wisdom of the world's religions and spiritual traditions--often without any particular attachment to doctrine. For some, this process merely adds to their original religion. For others, while this process includes their original religion, it also transcends it and becomes a revitalizing new synthesis of both their original religion and other spiritual sources.
    
5. sense that the direct spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality is religion’s single most powerful resource and tool for personal transformation. Consequently, it is spiritually efficient, logical, and manifest enlightened self-interest to seek out and integrate the most useful and effective spiritual wisdom concerning the expansion of one’s direct spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality no matter what religion or other source that spiritual wisdom may have come from.
    
6. sense that the direct spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality as the original core essence of religion is always freely and directly available to anyone anywhere at any time.
    
7. sense that the main goal of all religions is basically the same (expanding direct spiritual experiences of Ultimate Reality) and that only the paths to getting there are different.
    
8. sense that one religion or one religious perspective alone might not have all the answers or that all current religions might be partial or complementary views of the Infinite Wholeness and unfathomable Infinite Mysteries, which will forever surround the infiniteness of Ultimate Reality. Consequently, they seek to integrate and harmonize all the partial or complementary views to gain a more complete spiritual perspective.
    
9. want to discover their own personal spirituality and/or their direct relationship with Ultimate Reality for themselves rather than be told by others, such as traditional religious authorities (or a dogma that was created in mythic premodern times), what their personal spirituality should be or look like.
    
10. sense that the deep personal spiritual transformation that comes from the direct spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality also happens to be the most effective source for social and global healing and transformation.
     
11. take their personal responsibility to develop their unique omni-denominational personal spirituality into its completeness as senior even to the responsibility of their current religion for their personal spiritual progress. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to create or earn their spiritual growth while still paradoxically waiting on the grace of Ultimate Reality. At its essence, spiritual growth always has been best achieved in the do-it-yourself religion mode of personal co-responsibility along with the grace and presence of Ultimate Reality.
     
12. believe that the alignment of spiritual intentions (which comes far more easily from an integral and omni-denominational personal spirituality than from creating an agreement with the belief, rituals, or doctrines of traditional religions), will better equip them to co-act with other spiritual individuals to help solve critical global and local social justice, political, ecological and economic challenges.
     
13. believe they can and should learn to develop and listen to their authentic inner spiritual voice. This is because when properly discerned, their authentic inner voice of either conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self better reflects the purposes and nature of the Ultimate Reality. This makes their authentic inner voice of either conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self a higher spiritual authority for their personal spiritual life than traditional religious authorities. (For more information on how to properly discern your authentic spiritual inner voice, conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self, click here) 
     
14. know that they are pilgrims rooted firmly on the most solid and balanced ground in all of philosophy, science, art, religion, and spirituality--the focused life pilgrimage of continually expanding their direct personal spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality in all areas, stages, and levels of life. They feel like this type of spiritual pilgrim, they have joined all others throughout history who have chosen this central universal spiritual path and its never-ending spiritual journey. While traveling this path they joyously keep inviting in and supporting more company and they keep working for a better world so that they can travel the greatest adventure in the universe with many more spiritual playmates, on better playgrounds.
15. are also aware of and participate in the global 2nd Enlightenment movement--a larger movement that integrates and supports the values of the 2nd Enlightenment.
16. believe that there is no spiritual conflict whatsoever in always maintaining keen mental rationality for the discernment of truth, balanced with the feelings of heart, soul, and spirit. They believe that the Ultimate Reality endowed human life with the capacities for feelings and rationality so that both would be used in a correcting balance. Any religious doctrine or dogma that asks its members to ignore the rationality of current science, philosophy, or art--and to blindly and obediently accept its myths and world views as unchallengeable truth--knowingly or unknowingly makes its members unthinking, dependent children.

The surging open-source personal spirituality movement has in effect switched the location of religious authority from concentric rings of hierarchy of religious authority common in traditional religious structures to omni-centric spiritual authority centered in the individual. More specifically, in the person’s own authentic spiritual inner voice, conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self.

This great change and shift from the traditional hierarchy in concentrically smaller and smaller rings of religious authority to omni-centric personal religious authority has evolved naturally in part due to the new communication technologies more closely linking religious community members together as well as the great wealth and variety of spiritual safeguards information that simply was not available to our premodern-era predecessors. (Please review these critical spiritual safeguards to understand how to best implement a balanced and discerning personal spirituality.)

Today, the combined omni-denominational group spiritual wisdom of a mature spiritual community regarding maintaining essential spiritual safeguards can rapidly help and counterbalance a member who has misread their inner voice, conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self. Additionally, the already-existing spiritual validity tests safeguards for how to discern your authentic inner spiritual voice from the total spiritual heritage of mankind is readily available to assist the individual to decide both how to evolve and grow in the optimal spiritual way and what is most spiritually true for them. (To help the adult individuals in our spiritual community make their own final determinations of spiritual truth for themselves, Evolution Spirituality provides extensive cross-cultural and cross-denominational spiritual information on how to best connect with the highest self and/or Ultimate Reality Presence already within themselves and then how to know they are hearing its most authentic spiritual guidance, as well as how to know they are manifesting the fruits of authentic spiritual growth. We also provide extensive cross-cultural and cross-denominational spiritual information, principles, creeds, codes of conduct, position papers, discussions, etc. see links to left,) on all issues of spirituality or living a spiritually principled life in the secular world).

Evolution Spirituality's open-source personal spirituality holds that the direct connection and experiential relationship that all individuals currently have (or potentially could have) with Ultimate Reality (their omni-denominational personal spirituality and its development) is the most sacred, important relationship of all. In Evolution Spirituality, we further believe that because each of us is a unique personality, each of us will have a unique spiritual relationship with Ultimate Reality, a unique path of spiritual growth and that there will be as many different spiritual paths to the Infinite as there are individuals.

We believe that the authentic spiritual inner voice, conscience, spirit, soul, or highest essence/self within you is the highest spiritual authority and teacher, that the sovereignty of your spiritual free will is the spiritual prime directive of the universe, and that in matters of spirituality, "one size does not fit all." To help honor and support this uniqueness and your personal spiritual journey and adventure and your open-source personal spiritual authority, we have created the Evolution Spirituality tools and ideas found on this website to support you.

At some point, please review these critical spiritual safeguards to understand how to best implement a balanced and discerning personal spirituality.

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In the many science-grounded personal spirituality support sections on this website you can:

a.) learn about new principles and practices for creating and expanding your personal spirituality,

b.) connect at Essence,

c.) share your spiritual wisdom,

d.) read about current evolution science,

e.) be a part of or create new Religion 2.0 spiritual communities and

f.) act collectively to improve the planet in programs such as the Job One for Humanity Climate Re-stabilization Plan.

If you're curious about the great news of hope that the personalized spirituality that our Evolution Spirituality upgrade offers, click here.

To discover what is next to learn on this website, click the What's Next link and it will show you some of our exploration options.

Heard enough? 

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Almost seven billion people are already practicing some form of open-source personalized spirituality in one way or another, in part because almost no one completely accepts and practices all of the beliefs and practices of any faith to which they were born into or belong. Millennial generation members particularly want to make their spiritual faith a personal creation.

Whether most people of faith admit to it publicly or not, almost everyone is already accepting or rejecting various spiritual or religious beliefs and practices and personalizing their chosen spirituality or religion in an open source way. This simple subjective accepting or rejecting of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices from any and every religion, using one's own experience, judgment skills and authority is the raw simplicity, reality, and essence of what open-source personal spirituality is. 

Evolution Spirituality's open-source personalized spirituality is a natural evolutionary occurrence that is already happening everywhere and it is also rapidly expanding as a spiritual practice for more people, as many religions remain or try to become more restrictive in their beliefs and practices in their reaction to either this growing movement or to the powerful scientific changes in the world.

We hope you enjoy the many Evolution Spirituality concepts you will find on the Universe Spirit website, particularly this part on open-source personalized spirituality. It is a self-created, subjective spiritual process, which embodies the definition, key principles, and "how to's" for optimally creating or expanding your own open-source personal spirituality. Evolution Spirituality is all about providing you the most effective and accurate information and tools with which to self-create, customize, and optimize your own spirituality through a process that uses all of humanity's vast heritage of life-affirming spiritual wisdom and tools as well as the best of current, universe-scaled science. 

"Every person has their own unique spiritual path. These spiritual paths are so unique that there appears to be exactly as many religions in the world as there are people on their paths of personal spiritual development."

--- Rochelle Strider, Evolution Spirituality Life, and Spirit Facilitator 

The open-source personal spirituality aspect of Evolution Spirituality honors the fact that no matter what religious denomination we may have been born into or chosen, later on, almost all of us are continually creating or modifying our own personalized spirituality or version of this religion based on our ongoing experiences and the new information that we receive about life and about other religions and spiritual practices. In truth, very few of us either believe or practice ALL of what our current religious denomination tells us to believe or do. We invisibly personalize them. 

By far, most of us are already involved in the ongoing subjective creation of our own open-source personal spirituality and unique religions--so why not openly honor the process! Although for centuries the idea of self-creating your own transformative personal spirituality has been overlooked or underused, the core concepts of it are as old, if not older than, religion itself. In many ways, creating your own open-source personal spirituality is the original religion!

Open-source personal spirituality is also about one’s most direct personal and/or impersonal experience of and relationship to Ultimate Reality. It is the one "tree trunk" that holds, nurtures, and integrates all of the branches of the various religions of the world. At the deepest levels, it is an evolutionary and integral viewing position that allows for many omni-denominational religious and spiritual narratives to metaphorically and "authentically" describe an indescribable Ultimate Reality from their unique cultural experiences and perspectives without inconsistencies. (Omni-denominational basically means from all denominations.)

Next, transformative, direct spiritual experience of Ultimate Reality is the very heart of the open-source personal spirituality ---and is also the essential core of all the world’s great religions (and held by many individuals and religions to be the single highest purpose and nature of religion itself). This innermost essence of all religion is not religion’s outermost characteristics such as its social beliefs, doctrines, rituals and organizational structures, authorities, and hierarchies. It is the direct spiritual experience experienced by many of the founders and saints of the world's religions. (Important note: If you skipped the direct spiritual experience definition link, we highly recommend you review it before going on further because its results are really what almost everyone is hoping to achieve in their religious and spiritual life.)

Active creation of one’s spirituality (an integrative open-source personal spirituality) by using all of the life-affirming spiritual wisdom and tools as well as the science that humanity has acquired has been significantly re-invigorated and broadened over the past 30 years because of the internet, modern communication, international trade and travel, the rise of the global Interfaith movement and quite importantly, the recent birth of Evolution Spirituality's Open Source Spirituality and all of the other modern factors that are making our shared world smaller and helping to evolve a truly global community. Where once members of one religion would only be exposed to the tenets and authorities of their own faith, today internet and communications media technology is increasingly cross-pollinating the finest spiritual wisdom and the awe-inspiring lives of the saints and founders of different religions to individuals of every other religion.

The natural, evolutionary cross-pollination and integration of process involving the spiritual wisdom and omni-denominational personal examples from all of mankind’s religious and spiritual heritage and, the new breakthroughs in universe science, fuel the surging personal spirituality aspects of Evolution Spirituality.  Personal spirituality is also growing because the soul, spirit or highest essence/self within us naturally tends to recognize the universal applicability and importance of any spiritual wisdom and science truth--no matter where it comes from!

Once wisdom and scientific truth have been recognized, the innermost part of us does not want to let that wisdom or truth go; it wants to make that wisdom or truth a necessary part of our lives. Today’s more authoritarian and sectarian denominational religious organizations are having little success in slowing or stopping this powerful, natural evolutionary trend toward the integration of all spiritual wisdom and science and personalization of religion.

The power of evolution upon spiritual progress appears to be unstoppable. Today, as it should be, members of religions all over the world are becoming more independent and active in creating their own open-source personal spirituality--in essence, creating their own open-source personalized religion from the best of all denominations and current science from within whatever religious tradition they were born into or in which they currently find themselves.

Two closing thoughts on the future; Evolution Spirituality and Personal Spirituality:

"The relationship worked out between science and religion will determine the destiny of the human race."---Alfred Lord Whitehead

"There will finally be peace on earth when there are as many religions on earth as there are people. This will happen then because the subjectively created rules and ideas of each of these personal religions will apply only to the individual who has formed or created them and these subjectively created religious rules and ideas may not then be claimed or enforced to be objective science fact or religious truth for others."---A principle of open-source Evolution Spirituality.

Additional Important Reading:

Understanding more about what the Open Source Spirituality of Evolution Spirituality is and what its key principles are helps one to far better understand the personal spirituality of the older Religion 1.5 because one discovers how open-source spirituality empowers personal spirituality allows for community and a collaborative commons! The open-source personal spirituality principles found on these pages are also an essential part of the core "kernel" of Evolution Spirituality.