"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience"

Within Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s profound assertion lies a radical reframing of identity and existence. The conventional perception places humanity at the center of lived reality, fleshed, logical, contained by birth and death, occasionally stepping into the realm of the spiritual through meditation, prayer, or profound awe. This view treats spirituality as an experience distinct and occasional, a supplement to daily life, perhaps a transient journey into meaning when the material loses its color.

Teilhard inverts this paradigm, arguing instead for an underlying nature: the core of each person is fundamentally spiritual. Human existence, with all its joys, sorrows, limitations, and wonders, is a passage or sojourn of the spirit through the contours of time and flesh. Our lives, then, are not the sum or culmination of our biology or our intellects, but the theater wherein the spiritual essence moves, grows, and expresses itself. The body becomes the vessel or context, not the central substance.

This understanding opens a vast horizon. Seeing oneself as a spiritual being first, the myriad complexities of life, struggle, injustice, confusion, joy, beauty, become facets of an evolving, unfolding journey, guided not only by instinct or society, but by an innate longing for connection, love, and transcendence. The human experience in all its messiness is not an end in itself, but a process of learning and growth for the soul.

Perceiving life through this lens instills a sense of unity with others, recognizing that all beings are navigating their own spiritual journeys. It encourages compassion, humility, and curiosity. Perhaps most significantly, it challenges the fear of loss and mortality; if identity is spiritual, then death is not the annihilation of self but a transition, the spirit’s continuance beyond human limitations. The human experience, momentary and precious, is understood as a chapter in a far grander spiritual odyssey.