Exploring Boulder’s rich spiritual ecosystem

Spirituality in Boulder

By Paul Hagey Dec 4 2020

We wrapped our food and restaurant issue last week and embark on the lens through which we will explore Boulder features and profiles for the next two months: spirituality.

And like many of the lenses we pull out to inspect and celebrate Boulder’s cultural wealth, spirituality has a rich legacy here and maintains a vibrant, multidimensional presence.

This stems from the area’s rich history of free-thinkers, roots back to the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dalai Lama, influenced by a wave of Japanese Zen Buddhism and morphed into funky Boulder by way of the beatniks and psychologists who passed through or migrated to the area in the early 1970s.

Of course, the word “spirituality” today encompasses a wide range of ideas — mindfulness, intentionality, self-understanding, life coaching, yoga, meditation, etc. — and can bend into many meanings.

To anchor our exploration, we define spirituality as the focused pursuit of honesty and clarity within ourselves. Of course, infinite ways exist to approach this challenging endeavor — systems, religions, practices — but it all boils down to that essence, in our orienting definition.

We’ll explore the spiritual institutions that call Boulder home, the luminaries that practice and lead groups here, and both the light and dark sides that accompany this world, as all others.

We’re excited to go on this journey with you. We hope you enjoy the ride.

Paul Hagey

Paul Hagey is BLDRfly’s founder and editor. When not wrangling video, audio and words in the name of story, he’s riding his mountain bike, trail running and hanging with his awesome wife Jen and their young daughter. paul@bldrfly.com