Ok. We have just one more correction and then the pieces will be in place to get our definition of spirituality. Well, there is one little catch. This next section deals with the topic of ontology!
ONTOLOGY
Ontology is the study of being. You begin to get at ontology when you
ask the famous question "why is there rather not nothing?". It is
the mysterious fact of why is there anything at all?--and what the hell is
it?!? Now wait. Before you skip this section bear with me for a little bit.
Some of you are thinking "its too abstract, too esoteric, not practical".
Some of you are thinking "its too heavy, too deep, too intellectual".
WRONG! This is one of my pet peeves. I mean, math is abstract, until it is used
to build your house. Biochemistry is abstract, until it is used to save your
life. Topics such as ontology, spirituality and philosophy are very practical
for everyone. They help determine--are maybe even the basis--for what
you do and how you live your life. Don't let me hear you raise those complaints
again.
Our ontological view of ourselves--what we think we are--hasn't changed in many, many centuries. It came out of our basic intuition that we are made up of two parts: our bodies and whatever it is that seems to leave at death. This view was reinforced by Plato, strengthened by Christian thought, and updated by Descartes. It results in our automatic use of the mind-body model. However, in the first half of this century someone brilliantly challenged Descartes.
MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND DASEIN
Heidegger wrote a profound book called Being and Time. He begins this
work of genius by saying that true ontological thought had not really been done
since Plato. Heidegger did not like Descartes, to say the least. In fact, his
work begins with the promise that he will demolish Cartesian thought. Descartes
leads us to think that there are two parts of reality: things in the world,
and us. We tend to experience the world and think of it as something "out
there" while I am "inside". It is "not me". Two separate
parts: a development from the mind-body model. Heidegger said that this is not
true.
Now wait though! Other people have also said the same. BUT! They would say it isn't true because the stuff that seems "out there" is only a projection of my mind. In philosophy this is called "idealism". Another group of people go the opposite way. They say there is no mind--it is only a result of chemical interactions. This is more popular today and is called "materialism".
Heidegger said that very way of looking at it is all wrong. You simply can't
have the "mind" part without the "stuff out there" part
and you can't have the "stuff out there 
part"
with out the "mind" part. You can not just have "the thing that
spews lava occasionally" without also, always, at the same time, having
an "angry god" or "plate tectonics" and vice versa.You
cannot have "things" without also having something that knows them.
You can't have knowledge without things to know. We have already learned
that our knowledge of things is always understood through the filter of a paradigm.
We interpret things and events that appear to us.
Heidegger says that there is a type of creature where things in the world and interpretations of what those things are comes together. It is called a "dasein". A dasein combines, no--is the combination of real events in the world with the meaningful interpretation--the "knowledge"--of what they are.
Heidegger inquired about what we are. What he came up with was that we are a particular type of creature called a "dasein" which means "the there-being". What Heidegger means by this is that we are always there, in a world full of real things that then must be given some kind of meaning. The key here is that there is no world without a meaningful interpretation and there is no meaningful interpretation without a world. We are the "creature-that-interprets". Homo hermeneuticus.
So, for instance, a volcano is a real event in the world. A dasein is the creature that combines this with a meaningful interpretation such as "angry god" or "a mechanistic result of geology and plate tectonics". The things in the world and our interpretations are not two separate, mechanistic parts. They are one whole thing. You can't have one without the other. They are not two interacting parts. They are two sides of the same coin.
In general, most people interpret the world according to how they have been
taught to interpret it. Daseins though, do have a small degree of freedom to
choose how to interpret events. For instance, if you have a fight with your
best friend how will you interpret it? What will it mean to you? Was she just
having a bad day? Maybe he has the flu? Maybe you did something to anger her?
Perhaps he has found someone he likes better and doesn't want to be your friend
anymore? How will you interpret the fight? Only a dasein has such an ability
to choose what things will mean. If you were abused as a child does that mean
"you have an excuse", "need help", or "it doesn't matter
now"? Everything we experience is a combination of real things and what
they mean to us. 
We never know things in themselves, as they actually are. We only know our meaningful interpretations of things, and we have some freedom to change interpretations. We interpret in ways no other animal displays. Other animals do not appear to be daseins. Their interpretation of events in the world appears to be solely a result of genetic programming and training (think of pet tricks). Basically, for animals that are not dasein, things are either "safe" or "not safe", "comfortable" or "not comfortable". Daseins, however, are not so constrained.
We live in a world of quarks and neutrons, pulsars and black holes. Other animals only have comfort, hunger, and such. Our relationships with others of our kind have frustration, justice, love, hate and infinite gradations of thought and feeling. Other animals have attraction or avoidance. We manipulate the natural world in unbelievable ways. I mean, we don't react to the moon by howling. We build a ship and go there! We display evidence of reflective awareness of our own existence and non-existence in monuments and art that is not seen in any other animal. We are distinct and unique. We are dasein.
Did you notice how some of the above followed our field model: social, physical and subjective? Are you wondering where the spiritual is? Well, now we are ready to put the pieces together. I know this was tough. You might want to read the above paragraphs a couple of times.