I find it useful to have this broad and simple definition of spirituality.

For me, spirituality entails the aspects of human life that are less to do with the empirical or physical, less to do with matters of consumption or servicing biological demands. Spirituality is about the more elevated stuff of life such as the intellectual, the creative, the moral and the relational. It should be understood essentially by its capacity for improvement both to one’s self and to those one engages. That is my definition in its essence.

I think it is doubtful whether traditional religion would qualify for this purely on the grounds that it is so steeped in tired conventions and bad coercion, and so very often to the detriment and not the improvement of the populous.

A true spirituality for the modern age would be linked to enlightenment and would make a marked contribution to the overall well-being of the human race. It would therefore be less subject to dogma and the determinations of those who seek to impose their particular morality upon others. Certainly when it starts killing people in its name it is no longer worthy of the cause. For these reasons I think that religion as we have come to know it is not at the starting post of any new spirituality.