What It Means To Live a Spiritual Life
Living a spiritual life is to be a soul relaxing into its human experience.
When you invite energy and spirit back into your self and your life, you begin to experience what it feels like to be fully alive. You understand that your soul is eternal and your body is natural form. Governed by the same energy and natural cycles of the Universe. Always changing, going through mini deaths and rebirths, and on and on. Perhaps you can see life as a constant evolution. Or even one big exciting adventure, filled with surprises and incredibly rich depth and meaning. Life wants you to be in effortless peace, relaxing into the diverse range of experiences, emotions and lessons one has to learn throughout the course of their lifetime. Whether it is pain or joy, death or rebirth, there is love woven throughout it all. This is what it means to live a spiritual life. Spirituality is not an identity, it is a way of being.
Relax
Living life fully means re-learning to let go of control and relax into the cycles of the Universe. Know that like everything in nature, everything blooms and dies according to its intelligence and rhythm. Human beings are no different. This is a Universal experience. So all of the control, seeking, worrying, expecting, pushing, resisting, rushing, forcing…that can all fall away. It’s just wasted energy on things and forces outside of your control. Notice and accept things and yourself as they currently are, while being open to the natural flow of things and the change that wants to come forth.
Listen
When you stop, be still, and just listen…the whole world opens up. Stop racing around like a wind-up toy. Embrace moments of silence and space. And just listen. There is so much intelligence inside of us, if only people can clear out some of the waste and noise and just listen to it. Listen to yourself by hearing the quiet whispers from your soul. Listen to yourself by bringing awareness to your body and recognizing the emotions and feelings that live there. Our souls and DNA hold all the intelligence and wisdom we will ever need. Our nervous systems are highly advanced and will signal feelings and sensations to guide you in making decisions in the moment. The key is to let it pass through you, listen and feel it. Not to resist and hold it inside the body. Then these emotional signals will be locked inside, continuing to cloud our ability to see. As if old signals from decades past are still influencing us now. Our souls communicate with us in a multitude of ways, and the key is to figure out how it personally likes to communicate with you. And perhaps you will find this will evolve over time.
Soften
Drop the ego defenses and allow yourself the opportunity to not know, to not be certain. By thinking you know everything, you only close yourself off to the opportunity of growth and evolution. Hardening and closing off only keeps you stuck and frozen in time, unable to change and grow. So instead, soften. Be kind and patient with yourself, and learn to give yourself what you actually need, even if others cannot. Show yourself compassion and start with opening up to yourself in expression and communication.
Connect
There is pain and suffering that comes from believing we are separate from nature. The greatest tragedy is severed ties with nature and the dissolution of the community and family nucleus. Once we lived in connection with the land and lived by the same natural cycles. The bond that connects people and the land is sacred and ancient, and there once was a symbiotic relationship of mutual care and respect. This lifestyle of living in the flow of life and with respect of nature was sustainable, because being in that way of being gave us permission to do the same with ourselves. Despite the trends of modern society, this bond will always remain Universal and unbreakable. People suffer and feel alone because they reject this natural bond and have closed themselves off to feeling and connecting through it. And instead, people have learned to over-rely on getting that feeling of love and connection via other people, environments, objects and things. No matter how much humans destroy the land, and ultimately themselves, nature will always be in the flow of giving and receiving. That is true unconditional love. So start to open up by connecting with nature. Go for a hike or walk in the forest, or a swim in the ocean or lake. Remember that love is all around.
Spirituality is about living sustainably, in freedom and truth. It’s not an identity and it’s not a societal or organized movement. It is a way of being. It simply is a choice to fully live, not in fear, but in hope and acceptance. It is a choice to feel, learn, and evolve. It’s choosing to live a natural experience of change and growth.