The question of what your religion is, arguably among the most historically simple of queries, takes on new complication in today’s increasingly complex spiritual landscape. However, because human beings find life so much simpler when we can put ourselves in a box, we persevere with the line of inquiry. It’s why myriad tests have emerged to help folds nominate precisely what kind of spiritual personality they possess. Each is unique, but they all draw from the same four-legged framework. Here’s a sampling
Author Corrine Ware has put together a model for nominating your spiritual type that borrows heavily from Myers-Brigss. Here, interested parties can undertake diagnostic assessment of the psyche designed to help them understand where their spirituality defining lines are drawn: head, heart, mystic or integration (identifying with a group as a whole and individualization (separating oneself from a group).
Ware’s philosophy is decidedly religious in nature, assigning relationship of God to each of the defined types. For head types, she says, “God is revealed and I seek to understand him:” for heart types, “God is revealed and I seek to emotionally feel him; “for mystics,God is a mystery and I seek to emotionally feel him;” and for folks who fall inside Kingdom subset, “God is a mystery and I seek to understand him.”
Less directly rooted in religion, another spirituality-defining exercise divides people according to thinking, heart, mystic and activistism:
Thinking spiritualists try to make sense of mystical experience and communicate to others. Given to over-thinking, these spiritualists are highly language oriented; heart spiritualists seek transformation and self-renewal through shared experience and focus on joy; mystic spiritual is practice simplicity so they can hear an inner voice. These souls are comtemplative, introspective and intuitive and, activist spiritualists look to transform this work into the Kingdom of God through an abundance of personal expression and concrete action.
Another spiritual quiz (upperroom.org) alienates even further the concept of organized religion, and categorizes people according to whether they’re sage, prophets,lovers or mystics: Sages are mystics, prophets thrill to serve others, lovers are feeling types and mystics are known for their imagination.
There are other spiritual tests out there too, some more wedded to traditional religious constructs (which argues whether spirituality should first be more clearly defined before being measured). Some constructs in their prognosis, but all of them designed to give people a sense of where they fall along the great spectrum of spirituality.