Spirituality for Seekers

How to Create a Spiritual Path that Works for You

The Joy of Creating

by Leave a Comment

Joy doesn’t seem to be something that is discussed very often these days. We hear plenty about negative states such as stress, anxiety and depression, and we also hear quite a bit about more positive states, such as pleasure and the pursuit of happiness, but joy – both as a word and as a concept – seems to have become fairly unfashionable. This is unfortunate, because the state of joy is quite different to both pleasure and happiness, and it is arguably a lot more desirable.

Pleasure is a momentary and often fleeting emotion based on wholly external factors, such as being able to enjoy a good book in silence, eating a delicious meal or having sex with a partner. Happiness is more often associated with achieving an end goal of some kind, such as successfully beating a performance target at work, or reaching a desired bodyweight target after investing weeks or months of effort at the gym.

There is nothing wrong with either of these states, but they are not usually possible to sustain without interruption. The pleasure of sex begins to dwindle at the point of orgasm, especially for men, and the pleasure of fine dining can soon turn into discomfort when one’s appetite has been sated. Similarly, the state of happiness experienced when one achieves a certain goal can fade rather quickly, making it desirable to set out in the pursuit of another goal so that the ‘buzz’ of happiness can be experienced again.

Joy, in comparison, is something that can be experienced quite consistently over an extended period of time, and is not dependent on external circumstances. It is a state of contentment and satisfaction that is found within the present moment, and can be cultivated by anyone.

There are many ways to cultivate joy in life, but one of the most effective is to develop the habit of finding joy in whatever activity you happen to be doing right now. If you can find joy in activities which will also give you happiness from time to time, then so much the better.

Consider the Seeker who would like to write a novel, for example. Most people would view the actual writing as little more than something that needs to be done before the novel can be published, at which point they assume that they would experience pleasure and happiness. The Seeker, on the other hand, would put publication out of his or her mind for the time being, and focus instead on enjoying the process of putting words on paper. Not only would that here-and-now focus make the writing process one that gives joy in and of itself, but it is also likely to help the Seeker to write a better novel as well.

The same principle can be applied to virtually anything. Seek joy in the process of creating, rather than in what your creation might help you to achieve. For example, instead of viewing your gym visits or exercise sessions as little more than means to an end, you can focus on enjoying each visit or session as its own reward. Rather than working hard just so that you can improve your chances of getting a pay rise or a promotion, you can focus on cultivating joy by performing each task you take on – no matter how simple or complex – to the best of your ability.

You are a creative being, so it is easiest to find joy in tasks which are in some way creative. Fortunately, almost everything that you do as a human being can be viewed as creative if you choose to do so, and that means you can find joy in every moment. Even the simple act of sitting and taking a coffee break can bring you joy if you focus on sitting and enjoying your coffee to the best of your ability, rather than allowing your mind to drift off into the future, past or to some completely different place.

Instead of fixating on pursuing the happiness that comes from achieving specific outcomes, try focusing on finding joy in the actual process of pursuing those outcomes. Find joy in the cooking of each meal, in the time you spend on the treadmill, in the washing of your car, and so on. By doing this, you will fill your daily life with a rich sense of inner joy, your sense of general wellbeing and contentment will increase, and you will still get to experience any happiness gained through the achievement of your goals as a welcome bonus.

The joy of creating your life from moment to moment is one that can be developed in any and every situation, so start where you are right now. Live today with joy by doing whatever needs to be done for its own sake, and to the best of your ability, and you may well find that this is an enlightened and empowering approach to life that you may also want to adopt in the weeks, months and years to come.

A New Way to Look at Consciousness

by Leave a Comment

The words consciousness and spirit are often interchangeable, especially when we discuss the question of whether or not there is some part of us which will exist after the death of our physical being. Like many other Seekers before me, I have thought long and hard about this particular question, and although I haven’t come up with any hard-and-fast answers (the fact is that we won’t know for sure until we get there), I have come up with a way of viewing my own consciousness or spirit which satisfies both my desire to be rational and my desire to pay attention to my intuition.

Those who view man as a purely physical machine tend to think of consciousness as something that is a by-product of the physical brain. With that model, the death of the physical brain naturally means the end of consciousness, and the oft-reported ‘light show’ of the near-death experience is regarded as little more than the brain being flooded with chemicals to make the dying process less painful or frightening.

Those who view man as a spiritual being tend to think of the consciousness as a continuous stream of awareness which passes from lifetime to lifetime, with perhaps some periods of limbo in between.

My own view is a little different, but I think that it meshes well with both perspectives.

Imagine that you want to build a simple AM transistor radio. To do that, you would need to obtain various electronic components, such as transistors, capacitors, resistors, a battery and the all-important ferrite rod. Lay all of those components down on a table and you would have everything you need for a potential radio, but you wouldn’t hear a thing.

If you were to assemble those components in a certain way then you would have an actual radio which can be switched on and tuned in. The radio would now make a sound because it is capable of receiving radio signals – which are ever-present in the environment – and play the resulting broadcast for all to hear.

Having built a functional radio, you could now disassemble it, either by removing the components one by one, or by smashing it with a hammer. This would change the configuration of the components so that they could no longer operate together as a radio, and your machine would immediately cease to make any sound. The broadcast would fall silent.

Now, where is the broadcast that you listened to earlier? You can’t hear it, but it hasn’t exactly ceased to exist, because it is still being transmitted, all around you. All that has happened is that the machine which you used to receive and play the broadcast is no longer functional.

I think of consciousness as being much the same as the radio broadcast, and of the physical body as being analogous to the radio itself. Consciousness, then, is not something which arises from the physical body, but rather, it is something which is expressed through the physical body.

We tend to think of ourselves as having very different levels of consciousness or spiritual development because we all behave in very different ways, but that could simply be due to the fact that we are all unique physical machines. Listen to a particular radio broadcast on a cheap transistor radio and the quality won’t be anything like as good as it would be on an high-end system. The broadcast itself, however, would be the same.

My notion, then, is that there is just one signal being broadcast throughout the whole universe, meaning that there is just one consciousness. You are that one consciousness, which is currently being animated through your physical being. When your physical body dies, the broadcast being expressed through it will seem – to others – to fall silent, but it will continue forever, and will express itself in many other ways, through many other physical bodies.

To put all of this into a more ‘spiritual’ context, you are not really an individual spirit, but rather, you are an individual expression of the one Spirit, or what many traditions call God or Infinite Intelligence, and so is everyone else.

Look at your neighbours, your spouse, your parents, your children, you co-workers, your pets and any other living being, and you will see yourself – the one Spirit – being expressed in many different ways. This is why so many teachers have said that ‘we are all one’ and that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and be careful to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Every single living thing on the planet is an expression of the one Spirit. Those individual expressions may come and go, but you – the Spirit itself – will continue for eternity.

How to Meet Your Inner Guide

by Leave a Comment

Whilst some people explore spirituality in an effort to somehow become more than they currently believe themselves to be, a common notion in many traditions is that you are already quite complete. If you are, in essence, a spiritual being who just happens, at this time, to be having a human experience, it makes sense that you can’t really become any ‘more spiritual’ than you already are. On the contrary, the true purpose of spirituality is to help you get in touch with your core nature and learn how to access – and possibly develop further – the innate qualities within you.

One of the things that you already have within you is wisdom, and today you will learn how to access that wisdom through something called your Inner Guide (also known as a Spirit Guide, the Higher Self or simply as ‘the voice within’). This is a representational or symbolic figure that you will meet via the imagination, and once you have met your inner guide, you will be able to ask for – and receive – spiritual guidance as and when you need it.

How to Meet Your Inner Guide

Before you continue, please ensure that you have created an inner meditation space as instructed in my previous article on Exploring Inner Space. Assuming that has been done, and you have used the meditation space for a week or so to fix the location in your mind, you should proceed as follows:

Go to your inner meditation space and spend a few minutes grounding yourself there, either by meditating or by sitting quietly and enjoying the details of your surroundings.

Now imagine, somewhere in the far distance, some kind of portal or doorway. Don’t force this portal or doorway to have any particular appearance, but just allow your imagination to settle on whatever design arises.

It is from this portal, or doorway, that your Inner Guide will appear when you invite them to visit you, so invite them to do that right now, using whatever words you wish. If you are stuck for words, a simple: ‘Inner Guide, I invite you to visit me now,’ will suffice.

Now imagine that a figure steps through the portal or doorway, and slowly walks towards you. Allow your imagination to portray the figure in any way it wishes. It could be that your Inner Guide takes the form of a famous religious figure, such as Jesus or the Buddha, as an angelic being, as a wise old man or woman, or as something completely different, so allow the figure to appear in whatever way comes naturally.

When the figure is standing before you, ask your Inner Guide any question you like about your spiritual development and your life in general.

Listen to whatever your Inner Guide replies, and if you wish, converse a little about the matter you have raised.

When you are ready to end the conversation, thank your Inner Guide for their help and guidance.

Now see your Inner Guide turn and walk back to and through the portal or doorway, leaving you alone once again in the meditation space.

Spend a minute or two considering the conversation you have enjoyed with your Inner Guide, then open your eyes and focus on the external world until you are fully reacquainted with the here-and-now.

You may, if you wish, note down the details of your conversation with your Inner Guide in your journal.

It is important that you give serious consideration to any advice that you receive from your Inner Guide. You are not obliged to follow it, of course, but doing so could well prove fruitful.

This Inner Guide meditation exercise is an excellent way for Seekers to access their innate wisdom. It won’t appeal to everyone, but if it appeals to you, I would encourage you to practice it on a weekly basis as a simple and enjoyable way to listen more carefully to your intuition.

Exploring Inner Space

by 1 Comment

There are numerous metaphors for the interior life of the individual, but most of them allude to it as being some kind of inner space, often with its own landscape, features and buildings. Older traditions speak of heaven being a kingdom within, and of that place having many mansions, whilst modern approaches speak about inner temples and inner sanctuaries. Even non-spiritual psychological systems often encourage people to create a ‘safe space’ inside themselves, and to make it a ‘happy place’ for therapeutic purposes.

‘I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions,’ wrote St. Teresa of Ávila in her 16th century spiritual guide, The Interior Castle.

A few paragraphs later, she explicitly exhorted her readers to imagine such a place. ‘Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse.’

Whether this space within ourselves is described as an interior castle, an entire kingdom as anything else, it is always experienced through the faculty of the imagination, and that is not really surprising. Whilst mainstream society tends to think of imagination as being little more than something we can use for the purposes of escapism, such as watching a movie, playing video games and reading novels, it is actually one of the things which makes us such creative beings, and sets us apart from other species.

It is the imagination which makes it possible for modern spiritual practitioners to meet and interact with the ‘Higher Self’ or ‘Spirit Guide’. It is the imagination which allows those in the Shamanic tradition to experience their inner journeys and take on the qualities of their ‘Power Animal’. It is also the imagination which makes it possible for individuals to receive information via their dreams or waking visions.

To discount the imagination as being little more than a childish toy would be a grave mistake. On the contrary, the imagination is potentially the most powerful tool of transformation that the Seeker has, and it is therefore wise to explore, develop and make the best possible use of it.

The only way to do this is to actually start working with the imagination on a regular basis, and in this series I will provide guidelines which are designed to help you to do that. The best way to proceed is slowly and methodically, so to begin with, you shouldn’t set out to explore the entirety of your inner kingdom in one go. Instead, it would be wiser to start by establishing a small ‘meditation space’ and getting used to that before thinking about venturing any further.

How to Create an Inner Meditation Space

Creating an inner meditation space is much like creating a sacred space in the outside world, but here the space will be created through the imagination. The advantages of having an inner meditation space are multiple, but the most notable ones are:

– Being able to create an inner meditation space which is as simple, or as sumptuously idyllic, as you would like it to be.

– Being able to access your inner meditation space at any time, no matter where you are, or who you are with, in order to instantly feel calm and tranquil.

To create your inner meditation space, sit quietly and close your eyes, and then imagine that you are actually sitting in the most ideal environment that you can think of for meditation purposes.

The ideal environment will vary from person to person. It might be a small room in a simple Buddhist temple, a secluded mountainside cave, or a comfortable clearing in a forest. At the opposite end of the spectrum, it might be an ornate temple of white marble, with large green plants, indoor fountains and wind chimes sounding gently in the background.

You should feel free to imagine your ideal environment in any way you wish, but you should do so as vividly as you can. See the colours and textures of your surroundings, feel the seat or meditation cushion beneath you, hear and smell the sounds and fragrances that are present and slowly build the scene in your mind.

Your ‘inner vision’ of this environment will improve over time, so don’t expect to experience it vividly straight away. Those of you who can’t visualise at all should focus on what you can imagine, such as the general feeling of being in your ideal meditation environment, and you will find that visual imagery will begin to arise quite naturally of its own accord, just as it does in the dreaming state.

Having created your inner meditation space in this way, spend a further five minutes simply sitting there, as if meditating in that environment. Focus on your breathing and allow the environment to be present in the background for the duration of your meditation.

When you have completed your meditation, open your eyes and focus on the external world for a minute or two until you are fully reacquainted with the here-and-now.

You should practice this exercise once or twice a day, and you can also ‘drop in’ on your inner meditation space at any other time, simply by imagining yourself sitting there. With regular practice, your inner meditation space will become more and more realistic, because what you are doing is developing your imaginative ability by repeatedly creating a small part of your inner landscape.

Note: Some people like to make their space even more vivid by sketching or painting it. Others like to describe it vividly in writing, or to make a model of it. If any of those activities appeals to you then you should feel free to participate in them.

This inner meditation space will serve as your ‘inner centre’ for as long as you want it to, and it is from this location that you will proceed to explore the many spiritual treasures which lay dormant within you.

The Kingdom Within

by Leave a Comment

One of the notions found in many spiritual traditions is that the most important things in life are not to be found in the physical world that lies outside ourselves, but within us. In the spiritual community, it is often repeated that, ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’, and in mainstream society we just as often refer to qualities such as ‘inner joy’ and ‘inner peace’.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus warned against placing too much value on the outside world, and to focus on the inner world instead. ‘Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don’t break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ (Matthew 6:19-21)

This quote, and others like it from a broad range of traditions, has usually be interpreted as a straightforward encouragement to focus on spiritual matters rather than on the pursuit of material wealth and success. Now it could be that it was meant to be exactly that, and nothing more, but there is an alternative interpretation within those words which could open up entirely new vistas to the Seeker who wishes to explore them.

As human beings, we have something that no other species of animal seems to have, and that is our ability to imagine. Whilst we would like to think that we experience life exactly as it is, the fact is that we mostly live through how we imagine life to be, and our level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is mostly based on the conditions that we picture in our minds, rather than on what we actually experience in the external world.

Consider the number of people who are plagued with worries, anxieties and fears. Some imagine losing their loved ones, others imagine losing their jobs, and still others imagine contracting a terrible disease. These inner imaginations create negative emotional experiences that are perceived as being very real even though they are quite unrelated to outer conditions.

We are all familiar with these negative applications of the human imagination, but the good news is that the imagination can also be used in much more positive ways. Any one of us, at any time of day or night, can close our eyes and imagine being loved, secure, happy and content. Any one of us can, in the blink of an eye, transport ourselves to any location, and – through our imagination – enjoy a sense of actually being there.

What if, when telling us to store up treasures in heaven, Jesus and other teachers were actually advising us to learn to make the most of our inner experience? What if, when saying that the kingdom of heaven is within us, we were being encouraged to use our imaginative faculties to seek and find that kingdom?

I am not merely talking about prioritising spiritual pursuits over material ones, but about learning to make the fullest use of the imagination in order to create a rich, interior life which provides inner joy and happiness even when external conditions are less satisfying than we might prefer them to be.

Over the next few posts, I will talk about how any Seeker can begin to do exactly that. My ideas may not appeal to everyone, but for those of you who do find them appealing, they just might serve as the keys to the kingdom within you.