From my point of view, absence of, if not always rejection of, dogma is important in differentiating Religion (capital R) from spirituality (lowercase s). I also think a bit of a gnostic slant is a handy thing, but would become wary (in quite a knee-jerk way, I'll admit) when the initial letter becomes capitalised. Inclusive vs. exclusive? Hmm. Good question. I think I see it as a kind of Venn diagram where Religion and spitituality are not mutually exclusive, as some Religious devotees do seem to have well developed sense of the spiritual, but not all, and there are some spiritually minded folk who are not really Religious at all.

The sharing of belief thing seems important too. I've no prob with people who find reassurance in the act of congregating with others who share the same spiritual/religious ideas, I can see it must be rewarding, but I do feel that it can be a bit of a cop-out when they do so in order to have others do their thinking for them. I mean, that's not a problem with most things, for instance I'm very glad that the people who grow the food I eat have had the sense to take on board the wisdom of their predecessors, but I've got a strong sense that spirituality is about as ineffably personal as things get, and so we are just as likely to make sense of it on our own as we are by reinforcing social bonds in the way Religious organisations do when they're doing the kind of thing your Gran does. If there's any evidence that being a member of a charitable religious group makes otherwise non-charitable people start to act in a charitable way, then that's gotta be a good thing up to the point at which it's at the price of acceptance of the group's religious viewpoint. A lot of Religious orgs have had a long time to practise their brainwashing techniques, and personally speaking, I think I'm already brainwashed enough without going getting Religion.

If I'm being honest, I'm not comfortable talking about what I feel about spiritual stuff, as one of my pet niggles about the whole thing is the way in which the writing down and codifying of such concepts can lead to dogma, which in turn leads to the whole Organised Religion thing and then next thing you know, it's time to start using Religion to justify all sorts of unsavoury stuff.

So what is the role of spirituality? Maybe it is also the same today as it's always been, whatver that is. Counterpoint the effects of Organised Religion by providing the personal gnosis and thus a bit of perspective to all the social stuff that we humans have to do? Stop us from going mental at the inherent wierdness of consciousness? I have no idea, but it's fun to postulate :)

Happy. that's another important bit of spirituality innit?

One other thing before I shut up. Religions with a sense of humour seem quite rare. Whereas spiritualistical shenanigans seem quite capable of retaining a good sense of perspectve and not taking themselves too seriously.