Spirituality in Daily Life | Spirituality for Seekers

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This year could well turn out to be the best year of your life. Not because of any particular astrological configurations, economic conditions or political situations, but because you are a spiritual being, and you have the opportunity – as you always have the opportunity – to take your rightful place on the throne of your own life.

So many people on the spiritual path make the mistake of thinking that passivity is somehow more spiritual than activity, and that ‘going with the flow’ is more important than making efforts to realise their full potential. There is certainly a lot to be said for going with the flow, and for ‘letting go, and letting God’, but if that kind of passivity is not balanced by an equal amount of action towards an intended destination, the end result can be quite catastrophic.

Consider riding a raft down a river. You can be content to ‘row, row, row your boat gently down the stream’, but if there is a ravine up ahead you would be much better off making some effort, rowing towards the riverbank and getting yourself to safety.

Merely coasting along through life is not, in itself, a spiritual way to spend your time here. It may feel relatively easy in the short term, but the price for such laziness and passivity can be extremely high.

That being the case, I would encourage you to take some time out at the beginning of this new year to take a long, hard look at your life from an objective point of view. Are you a more evolved being that you were this time last year? Have you acquainted yourself with, and learned to make good use of, your true potential as a spiritual being? Is your spirituality genuinely serving the rest of your life, leading to improvements in your health, relationships, career and finances?

If your answer to any of these questions is no, I would urge you to make some changes in the year ahead. Begin by taking a fresh look at how you view yourself and the world you live in. Examine your beliefs. Consider reading through the Orientation posts on this website to remind yourself why spirituality is important, not simply for its own sake, but also because of the impact it has on ever other area of your life.

Then, decide where you would like to be this time next year. Would you like to be healthier? Then begin treating your body as if it were a temple. Would you like to be wealthier, even if only to be able to share your fortune with others? Then consider ways in which you can offer more value to the world. Would you like to have much improved relationships? Then think about how you can add more value to the people you love.

I wish you every success on your own travels through the coming year. But don’t be passive. Take your rightful seat on the throne of your own life, work hard to create your own spiritual path, and you can make 2019 the best year you have ever had.

Happy New Year!

For many people, there is a big difference between their spiritual lives and their daily lives. Such people might view practices such as meditating, visualising, journaling and worshipping at a church, temple, or in the privacy of their own hearts, as being ones which make up the spiritual side of life. To these people, daily life might mean any of the more mundane ‘non-spiritual’ activities that they do, such as working, shopping, taking care of the kids, walking the dog and getting the car fixed.

This apparent division between the spiritual and the routine is completely artificial, and whilst there are plenty of individuals who tend to compartmentalise their lives in this way, doing so is quite detrimental to their development as human beings.

If there is such a thing as spirit then it is all-encompassing, rather than something which can be contained within certain times or activities. As we discussed in The Unity Principle, there is no real separation between you and the rest of the universe, and it therefore follows that there is no real separation between one type of activity or another. If spirituality is real then it is something that you need to recognise as pervading the whole of your existence, and not just the areas that involve stereotypically spiritual activities.

Stand-up-comedians around the world love making fun of outspoken ‘spiritual types’ who proclaim to live in one way and then act in a completely different way, and it isn’t difficult to understand why. Consider the businessman who agrees with the principles of compassion and fairness in his time of prayer or meditation, but then chooses to approve company policies which are designed to short-change customers and put pressure on suppliers. Or think about someone who has the spiritual view that all people are equal, but lives as if some people are more equal than others.

I am not casting any stones here, but simply pointing this out because it is incredibly easy for such discrepancies to occur when we separate our spiritual lives from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. However, the good news is that, if we work on eliminating the artificial idea of separation, such discrepancies between what we believe and how we act will tend to disappear quickly afterwards.

One way to start eliminating the conceptual barrier between your spiritual and your daily life is to start viewing the latter as something which is contained in the former. In other words, instead of viewing spiritual and daily activities as being completely different things, consider the situation from a higher perspective and start viewing your daily activities as things that are part and parcel of your spiritual experience.

Pause for a few minutes and consider how you might go about your daily activities if you were to view every one of them as a chance for you to demonstrate your spiritual nature. How different would you be at home and at work? How might things change if you were to consciously bring your spiritual self to the classroom, boardroom or bedroom? What old habits would you seek to change? What new habits would you seek to adopt? What kind of changes would you want to make in the way you think, speak, and act in regular, everyday situations?

We’ve all heard of the phrase, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’, but you could just as easily ask yourself ‘What Would My Highest Self Do?’ no matter what spiritual tradition you identify with. Try to develop the habit of operating from the perspective of your true spiritual nature no matter what you are doing – be it meditating, marinating or making love – and you will soon find that every area of your life improves quite naturally as a consequence.