Sounds about right to me. I've been thinking about this kind of thing for years and came up with the same kinda stuff but whenever I try to talk to anyone about it they think I'm crazy or that I just think to much...so thanks for making me feel slightly less insane.

If anyone else has any different ideas though I'd still love to hear what they have to say....

I don't think the OP's version of 'spirituality' is typical of what people mean when they talk about spirituality. It doesn't just mean 'something greater than yourself', although that's the phrase that's thrown around. It usually means 'something *magical* greater than yourself'. It doesn't just mean 'the universe', it means 'the universe has a mind and causes things to happen for a reason'.

I've talked to people and explained to them that the universe is 'greater than myself', but they come back with 'yeah, but there's a purpose behind it all'. This is not much different from typical theistic beliefs. I think the key difference is that spirituality is more about experiences than about any particular creed. They emphasize the experience of 'feeling' that there is purpose and meaning behind what to you and me would call coincidences. A common saying of spiritualists is that 'there are no coincidences' or 'everything happens for a reason'.

I personally think there is a naturalist (i.e. non-magical) explanation for spiritual experiences. It mostly has to do with an intuitive mind-set that you allow yourself to fall back into. It is very similar to the intuitive mindset of children. Rational thinking, to a great extent, is characterized by an effort to deny the intuitive mindset, for the very good reason that many intuitions are systematically flawed. We call such flawed intuitions 'fallacies'. But when you allow yourself to be in the intuitive mindset, there IS a definite difference in the character of the experience. It is characterized by a sense of oneness, awe, wonder, and contentment. Everybody has had these experiences. Spiritualists specifically try to cultivate them. Unfortunately, they tend to eschew the benefits of rational thinking along the way. That's why the 'higher power' they emphasize is a magical mind-like one. It plays into the intuitive fallacy of anthropomorphization.

I consider myself a spiritual person, even though I don't believe in spirits or souls or any purpose to the universe. I am a little zen. I like to be in nature and feel the connection (caused by evolving in nature, not through spirits). I like to feel my connection with other people (some of them) and with myself when I am at peace. If you can manage to sink into a mental state of mu-shin (mind of no mind if you watched the Last Samurai), it feels very spiritual.

I guess my "oneness with the universe" is more about my mental state than anything else.

 I concur with DG that "spiritual" is an unsatisfying term, as all definitions commonly given are also unsatisfying. What do we do with perspectives about the composition of ourselves or the universe, but ply them for whatever their emotional content? I could just as easily swap an observation about the atomic structure that unifies us with our common need to eat and shit. It feels satisfying in a vague way to believe there's a connective thread between people, but this is probably because it behooves us to do so from a biological standpoint. Our ancestors needed to ally with each other to survive. Empathy, familiarity, etc., are more comforting abstractions than foreignness and inscrutability. And if we don't plug absolute values into these ideas, and merely think of these ideas themselves (like love), we can gain a small emotional impact from them.

I'm just talking off the cuff, but it seems superficially plausible to me.

I concur with DG and Magilum that the word spirituality is pretty much always a cover for an undefined or incoherent concept.  If you have to resort to using the word, you probably don't have a valid point.

Like what?

That's not a rhetorical question.  What do you mean, exactly, when you say "something more"?  More than what?  What kind of thing are you thinking of discovering?  Is it bigger than a breadbox?  This is what everyone has been saying.  "Something more" is just another way of saying, "I have no idea what I'm talking about."

For me, life has been exponentially more beautiful and awe inspiring since I adopted a materialist worldview.  Have a look at THIS ESSAY where I explain how the beauty of science trumps the hollow promises of religion.

"Feel that snorguphen!" "What? What's snorguphen?" "I can't define it, but, wow, can't you feel it?"

Definition is the root of communicating ideas. If something exists it has to be defined in some basic fashion before we can discuss it. As we learn about something that definition becomes more specific and more detailed.

You can be arbitrary about the definition, so long as you're clear about it (and aren't making up new definitions for established ideas). In the case of "spiritual" I think you might well be able to define it as "A class of pleasant emotional responses to external and internal stimuli associated with a sense of being a part of a greater whole, as in a member of a species, an active participant in a team, or as being a sentient portion of the universe."

There have always been things we know, or at least believe to exist without being able to explain it in words. Robert Pirsig explores this concept in detail in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. which, as he says in the book, has little to do with zen or motorcycles.

He explores the idea of quality, that some things are more desirable than others. we know some things are better than others, but how do we define what is good?

So I'll ask you a question raised in the book: What is quality in thought and statement?

Unless there's some kind of spectacular insight I'm not aware of, this is just  a simple mistake in critical thinking.  Quality (value) doesn't exist in the same way that green exists.  A plant has the physical property of reflecting light in such a way as to produce the appearance of what humans perceive as "green."  Regardless of whether a human looks at it, it has those properties, and reflects light in that way.  "Green" is a word we use to describe our perception of it, not the actual physical properties in question.  "Green" exists in our head, but what makes something appear green exists whether we do or not.

"Quality," on the other hand, does not exist without observation.  Furthermore, there is always a referential concept inherent in a quality judgment.  In other words, if I say, "That is a good knife," I mean that it performs the task of cutting tomatoes well, or that it is sturdy, or that it has been crafted in a way that is aesthetically pleasing.  I am measuring one or more of its properties against a concept in my head.  Without a creature to wield the knife and make a cut in something, the knife is nothing more than one more hunk of molecules.

Ok, you're getting into dangerous ground here.  Words are necessarily incomplete descriptors of the universe for a variety of reasons.  This is not disputed.  However, the limitations of words are philosophical, not material.  Whether I can adequately define the word, "the," it accomplishes its task in language.  To say that the philosophical limitations of words are justification for the existence of the incoherent is equivalent to saying that the existence of paradoxes in Quantum Physics is justification for a particular rock both existing and not existing at the same time.  It's a fallacy of composition, or maybe it's a category error.  In any case, it's misusing a philosophical conundrum to justify an empirical statement.

 Yo language titans. Here's an obvious short example of why the word itself, "Spirituality", is nearly worthless. It's definition is too broad, like the word "god".  On the up side tho, it's often helpful to shaking off religious dogma ..... an improved spell    

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

glad to help, even in a small way. I actually posted this in the interest of learning something, so I'm grateful you took the time to help.

This is actually kind of sad. I think most people have a natural tendency to classify the unique and beautiful as supernatural and science as cold and lacking in humanity. We as atheists should really try to erase the prejudice people have that science can't be appealing on an emotional and logical basis. I don't think nearly as many people would cling to their old religions if they lost this precept.

What you describe here is the impetus behind my coinage of the word 'wonderism'. I'm seeking to explore religion and spirituality with a naturalistic vocabulary and language, rather than obscurantist bullshit, and furthermore expressing, as Hamby has in his essay, the wonder of the scientific and naturalistic worldview. God is imaginary. Wonder is real.

There's a somewhat common occurrence experienced by musicians.  Where I grew up, all the musicians called it "Musicians' Euphoria."  I have no idea if there's a real name for it.  Sometimes, while you're playing something, especially something intensely complicated, you hit a kind of "removed" state where things are just happening, and you feel as if you are no longer in control.  Instead, it's as if you're watching yourself play, all the while experiencing the music in an incredibly focused and intense way.  (No, it's not drug induced.  At least it wasn't in me.)  I experienced it the first time while playing one of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, appropriately enough.  The etude lasts about ten or eleven minutes, but when it was over, I couldn't have told you if I had been playing for two minutes or twenty unless I knew intellectually what the length was.  I had lost awareness of the audience.  I was truly startled when I heard the clapping.

Our brains are really neat gadgets.  The really awesome thing is that I don't have to explain that experience by resorting to goddidit.  It was my brain giving me some kind of crazy trip because of some kind of genetic hardwiring.  I don't know the particulars, but I don't need to.  It was an incredible experience that is seared into my memory in ways that others are not.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the first people to invent religion were suffering from epilepsy.