Spiritual Attitude of Urban and Rural Area Senior Secondary School Going Students- A Comparative study

Spirituality is concerned with meaning and purpose, love and harmonious relationships, forgiveness, trust, sources of hope and strength, expressions of personal beliefs and values, and the expression of the concept of God through spiritual practices. Included these aspects in his model of nursing, which demonstrates how each person has different, interconnected levels of functioning that need to be addressed in holistic nursing care. Spirituality is defined as feeling connected or belonging in the universe, believing in a power outside one's self, searching for a sense of meaning or purpose, experiencing transcendence, seeking one's ultimate and personal truths, knowing of the unity of visible and invisible, having an internalized relationship between the individual and the divine, encountering limitless love, and moving toward personal wholeness. Spirituality is more concerned with direct experience of latent higher consciousness within one's self, i.e. the internal space, whereas religion is an institutionalized set of beliefs, practices, and guidelines that an individual adopts and follows. A person’s own sense of their place in the universe and how they relate to it: maybe but not always with reference to an idea of a ‘higher power’. Thus, people may identify themselves as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’ they have not got a label or identity that neatly falls under a religious faith (and this can be a deliberate choice or because they have not yet found a religious system that fits comfortably with their own spirituality). Spirituality encompasses religion and belief, but can be broader than this. Religion – the way people organize their way of relating to what they hold to be sacred and transcendent. Thus, “spiritually healthy individuals stand in right relationship with themselves, with other people, with the world in which they live, and with the transcendent, however they conceive it. Spiritually healthy individuals build purposeful lives, develop sound relationships, and take responsibility for the world around them. Spiritual life is one of dynamism, cheer and brilliance. It enables you to enjoy life every moment of your life. It removes the grief, despair and depression that is associated with modern life. It energizes, refreshes and vitalizes you. It inspires you and makes you creative. It introduces you to the most potent aspect in you- the Atma or Spirit. Denied access to Spirit, you live a dependent life, tormented by the world. Empowered by the Spirit, you transform from victim to victor, conquered to conqueror, subject to master. All it takes is a slight adjustment within, a minor change in attitude. Spiritual life is not about changing your wardrobe, diet or lifestyle. It’s about a shift in outlook or attitude, from profiteering to offering, from grabbing to giving, from `me’ to you. Its expanding your mind to accommodate higher pursuits. If you chase after success, it will elude you. Rise above the desire to prosper. Focus on adding value to others. You will be showered with prosperity. As long as desire is unfulfilled, the mind is agitated and you are unhappy. When the desire is fulfilled, your mind is calm and you are happy. Thus, you wrongly attribute happiness to object of desire. If unhappiness were inherent in the object, the same thing should give the same quantum of happiness to all. But an object can give extreme happiness to one and utter misery to another. True happiness lies in rising above desire. The object of desire will come to you and you will be happy. Thus, Vedanta gives you a way of being successful as well as happy. The development of religion has taken different forms in different culture. Some spirituals emphasize on belief while others on practice. Some spirituals claim to be universal. Some religions emphasize on the subjective experience of religious individual. In many places, religion has been associated with public institution such as education, hospitals, family and government political hierarchies. During the two recent decades, religious psychology and conceptual issues have drawn the attention of psychologists increasingly. Religious psychology describes the relation of religion and spirituality with mental health. In most of these studies, a positive relation has been found among religious beliefs, spirituality and mental health. (Pargament, 2007, West, 2000) Emmons defines spiritual intelligence as a set of capabilities for utilizing religious and conceptual resources. Spiritual intelligence has combined intelligence and spirituality in one construct; while spirituality is to search for holy elements, high consciousness, and perfection, spiritual intelligence includes the ability to use such issues which can predict individuals` function and compatibility and lead to production and valuable results (Rajaei, 2011). Studies indicate that teenage years are deemed as the stage of "changes in behaviour and religious faith", as the religious trust rises by near 60% in teenage boys and by 65% in girls. Once y reach maturity they become owner of religious beliefs to which they remain faithful and committed almost to the end of life. It can be stated that juvenile stage is the period of moral and spiritual consistency. Those who achieve their religious objectives during spiritual maturity and growth will get closer to God. Hence, the main issue involved in human guidance is to attain the spiritual goals in life (Shoarinejad, 2001). The impact of religion and spirituality on human life has raised such issues as stress due to lack of faith, changing the religious sect, indulgence in religious beliefs and measures The spiritual is a personal belief of every person. Mostly people in our country try to follow some kind of religion. The spiritual being a personal belief is something which is private. Even the students have different kind of spiritual beliefs. They come from different cast, community and creed with different beliefs. Still however, every student has some kind of beliefs. The researcher wanted to find out whether urban students differ significantly from rural students in their spiritual attitude. Our common observation is that there is no much difference in their spiritual attitude of both these groups Still however, the researcher wanted to verify whether the urban and rural students differ significantly in their spiritual attitude.