I think there are three main uses of which I am aware:
1) General sense of wonder and awe at real things: pantheistic ‘the universe is god’; sacred geometry; nature worship.
2) Rituals, yoga, meditation without religious or paranormal baggage.
3) Paranormal beliefs that do not fit into an existing religious framework, possibly because you don’t want to cause conflict between different religions so you believe in a non-denominational ‘supreme being’.
Note that these three things are in fact quite interconnected, at least if you broaden 3 (‘paranormal beliefs’) to ‘paranormal/non-physical aliefs’, which of course may or may not stem from actual beliefs (‘expectations about the world’) in the rationalist sense; and 2 (‘rituals’ and ‘meditation’) to other mind-hacking practices which largely amount to the summoning and manifestation of inner psychological archetypes or mind-stances, experienced in personified forms which we may call “gods”. There is a broadly consistent range of “spiritual” practices ranging from the purest and most “rational” sort of meditation, to what we call “prayer” in a religious context, to the sort of mysticism which is directed at “summoning” and even “channeling” or being “controlled” by a god or spirit. And of course, having a general “sense of wonder” about the world is also something that greatly enhances the effectiveness of these other practices.
I think there are three main uses of which I am aware:
1) General sense of wonder and awe at real things: pantheistic ‘the universe is god’; sacred geometry; nature worship.
2) Rituals, yoga, meditation without religious or paranormal baggage.
3) Paranormal beliefs that do not fit into an existing religious framework, possibly because you don’t want to cause conflict between different religions so you believe in a non-denominational ‘supreme being’.
Note that these three things are in fact quite interconnected, at least if you broaden 3 (‘paranormal beliefs’) to ‘paranormal/non-physical aliefs’, which of course may or may not stem from actual beliefs (‘expectations about the world’) in the rationalist sense; and 2 (‘rituals’ and ‘meditation’) to other mind-hacking practices which largely amount to the summoning and manifestation of inner psychological archetypes or mind-stances, experienced in personified forms which we may call “gods”. There is a broadly consistent range of “spiritual” practices ranging from the purest and most “rational” sort of meditation, to what we call “prayer” in a religious context, to the sort of mysticism which is directed at “summoning” and even “channeling” or being “controlled” by a god or spirit. And of course, having a general “sense of wonder” about the world is also something that greatly enhances the effectiveness of these other practices.