I have a confession to make: I’ve been ignoring my spirituality. In fact, I’ve been acting just like an animal, with no higher purpose. I eat, I shuffle things around (my substitute for the hunt), then I sleep and get up to do it again. Am I missing something?
Alright, I’ll get serious (I said that with a wink). People I know have many and diverse opinions on what spirituality is. Some tell me it is different from religion. They see religion as rote and structured and often hierarchical; whereas spirituality is personal. Some people define spirituality by the practices associated with it, and others see it as more intuitive and beyond conscious grasp.
I’m a perspective person. Rather than getting too analytical and definitive, I like to take a few steps back and enjoy the view. When I do that with spirituality, it disappears. All of those touch points that I and others have meld into one amorphous whole. And to me, that whole is the process of awakening.
So, what, then is a spiritual being? I would say it is any sentient being who is not stuck. If I am perceptive and inquisitive, open to new ideas and experiences, and able to listen, consider, and empathize, I am awakening. I am having a spiritual experience.
A spiritual experience, then, does not have to be blatantly spiritual. In fact, I wonder if the events, rituals, and practices that many of us consider to be spiritual might actually be running contrary to spirituality-as-awakening. Am I open and inquisitive if I am repeating something that is rote and repetitious? Am I truly listening if I keep hearing the same thing over and over?
Herein lies the power of everyday awakening, of being a conscious, ever-changing being. In this sense, are the wild animals not also spiritual beings? Are the trees and the wind not ever-changing, open, and adaptive to what the new day brings them? Perhaps this is what the Wise Ones meant when they said that everything is alive and has spirit. Perhaps this is the way we are all related.
And perhaps this is just more gibberish and I would be better off shuffling some things around, then going to bed.
The best response thus far to my meanderings is, “Like, whatever.” I know, it’s so 90s, but I still like it. Do you have anything as awakening to contribute?
Insightful points. I would ask the question, what is not in a process of growing, learning or opening? Change is unstoppable even for the hardest of substances and most dense thinking patterns. Even 1000 steps backwards are necessary in some cases for a lesson to be learned,,, and in that sense I do not see them as backward steps at all but forward steps appearing backward.