Living a Spiritual Life

Many people these days are into yoga, vegan diet, gurus, do some kind of cool meditation etc. These choices are often used as lifestyle choices which does not necessarily mean one is living a Spiritual Life. What is a Spiritual life? Is it someone who meditates? Is it being loving all the time and not showing anger, impatience, judgement etc.?  Does it mean someone who has forgiven their dad for raping them or a spouse for hitting them? Or a parent who has let their substance abusing adult child back in the house to live for free?  It can be all of these, or none of these. Spirituality is as individual as snowflakes, as atoms. It is a concept, a focus, not something that can be measured externally via  lifestyle choices or posts on Facebook proving one is loved and loving.

A Spiritual Life is a priority; it is a decision to choose to live your life with the focus that you are a Spiritual Being having a human experience. It is a focus that you also apply to others, without running around trying to "save" everyone in order to soothe your own feelings of anxiety, or in order to feel superior, or to "earn brownie points in Heaven" or because you think you have some answers for people who have not even asked you a question.

A Spiritual Life means having a discipline to keep this focus. For example, young adults go to college. Some keep their focus on the idea that college is a means to move their life forward, to evolve, a step in a long journey. Others go to college and get lost in the experience. They party, act out (rebel, experiment at the risk of their degree, etc), and say f*ck it to the future, "I'm living in the now." Both "get through" the experience, each road taken, each choice on how to get through it has pros and cons. Everyone has these choices and how you choose to look at what is happening in your life will change how each experience affects you. To accept every challenge and every life lesson as an experience that can further you on your Spiritual Evolution is a choice, your choice, and a choosing a Spiritual perspective takes discipline.

You can choose to acknowledge that when you were a ball of light with your Guides in the place between lives, you fully planned this life, just like deciding to enroll in college and pursue a degree with a major. Everyone's choices regarding how to live this particular life will be different. Some may decide, choose, to come here to party and drink or even be an addict. Others are  here for "graduate work" as a soul in this life. Wait, you are thinking, didn't you just make some critical comments about going to college and losing focus, partying etc.?  The key words are "losing focus."  A Spiritual Life is a focus, and the discipline to keep that focus. The focus is you looking at your behaviors, events or circumstances as something you (with Guidance) came here to experience to evolve as a Soul.

You cannot live your life constantly examining every choice you make as good or bad, stupid or intelligent, good luck or bad luck, a "sign" that you are "on the right path", or evidence that you are inferior to others.If you came here to drink and party (to learn about addiction, self destruction, etc.) and you manage to keep your focus on what you are experiencing and learning  you will change your Journey. Keeping that focus (to the best of your ability) means you are aware, self aware, and working to evolve by staying conscious. Staying conscious, and present, is a discipline.... and a gift. If you give  your full attention and energy to drinking and partying, your Spiritual Path becomes that of worshiping the drink and the party, making alcohol (or sex, or food, or work....) your God. The difference is focus. You may not be able to stop drinking, but by keeping your focus on Source and Evolution, and choosing to not worship alcohol, which you do when you make it your primary focus, your Journey will be much softer, while you continue to learn.

The focus that one is a Soul currently having an evolutionary life in human flesh is best embodied in what is often referred to as The Tao, the Way, the Path.  Every person came here to grow and evolve as a Soul. This life is college. It is not the end. The end continues on the Other Side. The Soul does not die (even quantum physics states this, for those who have some questions about spirituality). Having a focus is not about control. When you go to college, you cannot possibly know how or who you will be at the end of years of study. The experience changes you in ways you cannot predict. If your focus is on trying to predict or control results, that changes your focus from being in the experience, to a focus of getting the results. Instead, once you commit to college (this life) then you surrender to the experience in order to allow the experience(s) to shift you. After all, you enrolled in this life to be shifted, to evolve. Why come here, choose the life and come here, then resist it ? Or try to "manifest" something else. The latter is like enrolling in a creative writing course and spending the entire course trying to learn wood working, then wondering why you feel like a failure.

How do you know you are on the "right" path?  Many Westerners are obsessed with this question.  You don't always. This is why  it is called acceptance and surrender, not monitor and control.  If you always knew you were on the "right" path, where is the learning? Where is the need for faith? Where is the challenge?  Leave the "right" path alone. That is a distraction rather than a useful tool or focus. Instead accept what is in front of your face at this point in time, be it marriage, children, career, addiction, poverty, being fat, "slow" , "brilliant", or loneliness etc.  Now that you have accepted it, time to live through it keeping the focus that there is a higher reason, a learning, that will come to you, be given to you actually, when it is appropriate.  If you are lifting weights, you do not, at the time, think about the mechanics and physics of lifting weights. You just do it, to get through it the best you can. Later you might decide to study anatomy and physiology, or not. But at the time, when it is in front of your face, you accept the task and do it to the best of your ability. In doing that you will discover numerous things such as you are lazy, you had the chance to prepare better and didn't, you have a natural talent, you hate it, you love it, you fall in love with your trainer. The discovery is endless. The discovery is The Way, The Path. And it takes you to the next step, the next choice. Over time you will be able to see these choices strung together like pearls, making a mystical necklace.

A non-spiritual life choice means that you take each experience and use it to praise yourself or criticize yourself. If you choose to criticize yourself it means you second guess your choices and punish yourself. A non-spiritual life means that after punishing yourself, you try to escape (drugs etc), or get depressed because you are sure you failed (how can you be sure?), or you try "manifesting" to make "it" "all better". If you use the life experience to praise yourself, it is to claim you are brilliant, beautiful, amazing, successful because you "did" "all the right things."  Neither of these outlooks moves you forward. They are all conversations about how you performed in relationship to your expectations of how you thought things should go. You are comparing everything to your checklist about results, the future as you think it should be missing the larger lessons because you are so focused on "being right."And there is absolutely no focus, no conversation, no consideration of Spirit, Source. It is all "you", and your ginormous ego.

A Spiritual Life focus means treating each day, each event, as a new experience and as a chance for you to do the best you can at the moment, realizing each moment changes you. If you yell at a pet or a person, the next moment you will feel horrible for it. If you stop yourself from yelling, if you can,  and then choose to breathe, to reconnect with Source, the next moment you will feel peace and perhaps relief at finding a different solution than yelling. Or perhaps you do need to yell, because enough is enough and you have been too patient. Instead of building a story to justify your emotions, you shift to "what am I learning here" or "what is the challenge here" your behavior, your emotions and even outcomes will immediately be different. The same goes for when you take yet another drink, or cheat on your spouse, or overeat..... again. Stop working on the result. Let the result happen. Give the result to Spirit, to your Higher Self. ("Came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.)  The Higher Energies always have better solutions than your puny human brain. On your way to getting drunk, again, or overeating, again keep your focus. What are you facing as a challenge? Unspoken emotions. impatience, self loathing? Immerse yourself in the experience as it is happening. If you have been meditating, Spirit will come through. If not, perhaps self hatred will come through. Either way, you learn!  You learn more about your Self, where you are in your development, your strengths, or where you want to do some more conscious work on your Self.  If you lose focus by being overly "proud" of yourself, you will also lose focus. That does not mean don't celebrate, just don't turn that into a big story of "I did the right thing." Celebrate, like finding a hidden waterfall on the trail on a hot summer day. It is a gift, not a definition of Self.

This is the Spiritual Life. If you are struggling with addictions, you keep the focus on what you are learning, the challenges. Notice what happens every time you indulge (alcohol, food, sex, drugs). Immerse in it, it's already happening so fully experience it as a choice. That invites in the learning, by feeling and noticing everything that happens when you succumb to the addictive choices..This allows the learning to come in more fully, and growth will occur faster. If you misplace your attention to hiding what is happening, denying it, beating yourself up as it is happening, this is like you being in a creative writing class and trying to learn wood working instead. You will miss a great deal of the learning being offered, in the current class. Whether or not you like the class, it is the one you are in at the moment.

The Spiritual Life is all about focus, not controlling the events in your life, or your emotions. Embrace what is happening to you now. Feel your feelings about it until the feelings change.... don't change your feelings, you can't do that anyways. Change your focus, your feelings will shift as you heal and get stronger. Accept what is, ask Spirit to Guide you in what you are learning. Rise to the challenge if that is indicated, surrender to the circumstances if that is indicated. Which one is the right decision? The one you choose because that is the best you can do in the moment. How you choose will then show you the next "class" you need to enroll in. It might be "learn to live with alcoholism" class, or the" I have a bad temper" class, or "I think I am amazing class." There is no race, no outcome you to achieve; you already chose your outcomes before you incarnated. Keep learning, and keep your boundaries while learning. You have a right to exist, you are not here to be a doormat to others. Immerse yourself in each moment of your Journey while staying present in the moment, connected as best you can in the moment, to Spirit.

When you cross over you will be able to look over this life. You do not have the capability to evaluate what you are doing, while trying to do it, in this human form. While learning, ease up on yourself and give up the idea that you can control circumstances and events in your life. This outlook will make you a more compassionate person, someone who will ask questions before judging others for the demons and challenges they are facing in their life. You can share your experience, strength, and hope (do wait to be asked), but it is up to the other if or how they will use what you may have to offer. You cannot save anyone else; ultimately they have to save themselves. You can throw out a rope if you have some at the moment, but the other has to take it, Be of  service when you can. Model a way to live and share that with others as that is the biggest gift you give to Earth, to others, to your Self. Live your life, follow Guidance, don't be afraid to make mistakes, stay humble, have the courage to share your experiences, to be transparent when appropriate, to live an authentic life specific to you.  Stop judging your experiences as good or bad.  Leave the big picture to Spirit, to when you cross over, but know it is there, the Big Picture and Spirit, and you as a Soul. Work to keep that focus as you go through all your experiences.

Journey On