Why Spirituality?

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I originally answered this question on the Around Grandfather Fire Discord server, as one of their weekly prompts, but I thought it would be good content for here. The question was "Why? Why pursue mysticism, magic, spiritwork, etc? What's the drive? What's the push?"

For me, it's an interesting mix of "I had to" and "Things are better this way". I had a real sense of myself as therian/otherkin (non-human person inside) long before I knew what those words were, and a lot of my initial study involved trying to understand and explain that sense of the world and myself. When it comes to actual therian explanations, some are spiritual, and some are otherwise, but the spiritual ones always vibed with me better, and that leads to the other part.

The other part is a bit more pragmatic: it's a worldview that feels fulfilling for me, to see everything as full of spirit and magic and possibility. It helps me connect more with my world(s) and community. Pretty early on in my exploration, I got to a point where I felt like "I think things would be more interesting/resonant/fulfilling for me if I believed this way, so I'll try it". And I did, and sure enough, it sorta just kept building on itself; the more I looked for, the more I saw.

A way of synthesizing those two, I suppose, is that I've always been what folks might call "fantasy-prone". I suppose it's open to interpretation if that's a cause or an effect of my spiritual orientation, but I don't think it matters at this point; it works for me.