An interesting conversation this week with some friends, talking about connection to religion and upbringing and expectations. We all come at this from such very different viewpoints and experiences. I was raised in a family with strong religious practices and well defined standards. I learned them, I understood them and I chose, beginning as a teen but more strongly as an adult, to go my own path.

Suffering loss, and living through grief as a young adult, reinforced my growing belief that there was no higher power, that our lives are finite and just tiny parts of the universe, drops of water lost within an immeasurable sea. We are born and we die and that is where the story begins and ends.

But, over the course of time, I have begun to see and feel things differently. I have come to recognize a certain spirituality within me, not with religion per se, but with a sense and feeling of energy in myself and in the world around me.

As part of my second level of yoga teacher training, we talked about quantum physics, about energy and interconnectedness. We talked about energy vibration and the theory that, upon death, the collection of atoms that comprise the person you are, are redistributed and continue to echo through space.

It sounds a little out there, I know, and yet I think that there are times when we can feel the energy, both of those we have loved and lost and from the larger universe. Standing at a place of deep spirituality, like the Notre Dame Cathedral or the Western Wall, the feeling of spirituality is strong, nearly palpable. And, on a more micro level, there are times when many of us can feel the presence of loved ones with us.

I know that there are moments when I can sense a supporting arm around my shoulders, when I feel that I am not alone, that there is someone there for me and with me.

That sense of spirituality, the deep understanding that there is energy in the universe that is real and can be felt, provides me with a sense of both comfort and connection, another way in which I work to fill my full heart.