Have you ever explored the dichotomy of religion and spirituality? We tend to think of them as synonymous but to me they represent two different things that are often coincident. The word "Religion" comes from latin words meaning "to bind together" and this to me suggests it's more about the collective, whereas "spirituality" is more about individual experience.

So religion is the whole thing of living by a particular moral code, going to church every sunday, marrying within your creed etc. it's a very "wordly" concept.

Spirituality then is the whole "higher consciousness" "explaining the unexplainable" thing.

We can be religious without being spiritual, and spiritual without being religious. Ayn Rand for instance, or much of modern atheism serve as examples of the former. Ayahuasca, psychodynamicm, meditation etc. the latter.

Of course we often have the two come together as they complement each other quite well but we often see spirituality subjugated by religion, or people scared off spirituality by it's religious connotations.