This section is about embracing your spiritual self. What does it mean exactly to practise spiritual behaviour? What does spiritual behaviour look like? How on a moment by moment basis does it manifest itself?
Meditation is a fundamental ingredient of practising spiritual behaviour. Because of its importance I covered some practical guidance on how to start meditating at the beginning of Para 3.2 as part of finding your spiritual self.
If you practise spiritual behaviour you really CAN change YOUR world. A very bold claim I hear you say. But the way it is done is by transforming our minds such that the world that we SEE and experience is reality and not one that we see distorted by delusion.
What you notice is what you get. We see things and people not as they are but as we are. We shape the reality around us by what we choose to notice. Whatever you pay attention to in families will start to grow and increase. Every partner is both beautiful and ugly depending on how you look at them. Notice and attend to what you would like to see more of, and watch it manifest. It has been said that the difference between a happy and an unhappy person is what you SEE and notice. The world that you see and experience is very largely a reflection of yourself.
We change our world by changing the person that we present to the world moment by moment. There are so many ways that you do this and everybody does but usually unconsciously. For example if you give out and radiate love and positive energy you will receive it back faster than you would ever think. Conversely if you are miserable, and negative and feeling self pity then you will instead find that reflected back to you pretty quickly in your daily experiences.
Another classic example is that without realising it you change the people you meet. If you are the type of person who tries to dominate every conversation, never really listening to anyone else, always desperate for the other person to finish so you can expound your opinion , then you will miss out on so much of the richness of other people. Try to understand that people who do this are changing the people that they meet. People you meet will be different and will closedown such that they appear passive and quiet and uninspiring. In fact the opposite may be true-given a chance they may have lots of wisdom , and information that would have been pleasurable and helpful to you. Your domineering overbearing inter personal habits suppress the people you meet so that you miss out on their potential interest. It is always surprising to me that when you start to talk to anybody , whatever their initial impression and appearance, they have an interesting story or angle to tell. But many people dismiss the people they meet and shut them out and never get to enjoy them . And away from you the people you meet will regard you as an overbearing know all so you damage the potential relationship / friendship that you might have had with them. What is your point? Have you become so arrogant that you believe that you already know everything and your job is to prove that to everyone you meet? Are you still being controlled by your EGO? Do you now believe that no one can tell you anything ever again? If you suffer from this try and relax and start to watch the richness of people being revealed in front of your very eyes instead of stifling it. You CAN change the people you meet simply by wearing a smile and listening to them and asking open questions and genuinely being interested in THEM. Go and try it-you will be amazed!
I say again that the world that you see and experience is very largely a mirror of yourself.
The Beatles sang ‘all you need is love, love is all you need’ and it was all true. It is fundamental to being spiritual to love yourself and those around you.
Love is the ultimate emotion to which man can aspire In ‘normal’ life this is unquestionably true but even in the most hopeless and desperate situation e.g. being a prisoner in a concentration camp, or a passenger in an aeroplane than is falling out of the sky, you can still know bliss and contentment through the contemplation of loved ones.
Practicing loving kindness could be defined as having a strong wish for the welfare, well being, and happiness of others. This may take the form of e.g. consideration, compassion, empathy , sympathy , wanting the best, and support for others motivated by warm hearted affection.
On a day to day basis what practical steps can you take to put your love for those around you into practice?
We have all heard this expression so many times that we say ‘yeah, yeah. I know all about that.’ But most people have little idea what it really means.
Before I embarked on my own journey of spiritual learning and searching I thought that living in the moment just meant being alive to and noticing and savouring e.g. a particularly beautiful natural landscape or sunset or hearing and savouring a piece of beautiful music etc. But I have learnt that behaving with SI takes living in the moment to a whole new level that most people never know about.
Living in the moment is often alternatively referred to as awareness, or aliveness, or being awake and in Buddhism it it called mindfulness. Behaving with SI means feeling for the rhythm of the moment. It means connecting with and synchronising with the moment and consciously choosing your actions and responses with care. Living in the moment is the most important manifestation of spiritual behaviour and therefore this is an inevitably lengthy section in which I will give you several examples to illustrate it.
We do not need time travel for people to live their lives in the past or the future; they are very good at doing that for themselves. We need time travel to enable people to visit the present !
Consciousness is a mystery and a miracle that should not be taken for granted and it is a travesty that people squander their thoughts in so many ways instead of using them to be here for the present and now. What does it take for people to see that 1 second of consciousness is the greatest most exquisite and precious possession of all in the entire universe?
Some examples of what it means to really be in the present are:
It is about monitoring and observing your own thoughts and reactions, and blocking conditioned responses of e.g. defensiveness, ego, aversion, attachment, and other negative emotion. Sadly many people live their entire lives ‘asleep’ , completely unable to ever realise that every behaviour, every thought, every response, that they have learnt is from someone else. They never have a single thought that is truly their own. The free choices that they believe they exercise are in reality from a menu that they have been brainwashed with mostly by their parents, the media, and marketing. Unless we are ‘awake’ we think we are free but there is probably not a gesture, a thought, an attitude, a belief, or an expression that is not coming from someone else. We are in many ways conditioned clones of each other.
You must live in the moment because the consequences of not doing so are that your autopilot will merely respond to situations with conditioned responses i.e. you will always be constrained by your past and childhood-you will never be free from your past to grow and improve. The conditioned responses presented by the mind will often or mostly be from the orientation of your EGO or sensual desire (craving) and as such are raw or basic emotions. The point about living in the moment is that you do not believe and accept everything you think and instead apply fresh intelligence to each moment.
Whenever you are wanting , or craving for something bigger, better or different you are by definition not in the moment appreciating life just as it is. You will be familiar that the brain is composed of two parts; the conscious and sub-conscious parts. The majority of the brain is the unconscious part where memories and experiences are filed and stored. The sub -conscious part offers up to the conscious part suggestions that it believes to be ‘helpful’ based on past repeated experience. This is how addiction and aversion work. The sub-conscious brain offers up suggestions of thoughts about learnt habits that have provided temporary pleasure in the past eg having an alcoholic drink or cigarette. It is the same process when your sub conscious feeds you aversion thoughts such as ‘you don’t like people from different cultures, or maybe children or cats!’
If you are applying fresh thinking in the moment you will not just be repeating learnt behaviour and operating out of habit.
People who do not live in the moment dismiss and ignore opportunities for connection with other people. They do not really LISTEN to what people are saying to them and are instead eagerly waiting to respond with some prepared and well worn and frequently trotted out package of opinion or advice.
Remember that the moment may not always require you to be transmitting , and a spiritual person recognises when the moment requires you to really listen . Is someone reaching out to you? Are they trying to say something more deep and meaningful to you and looking for empathy and an encouraging signal that you are really there for them in the moment. Most people blunder on desperate to be dominating the conversation and thereby missing and obliterating potential opportunities for real connection. Try not to be always wanting to come in with your own views or anecdotes. Really try to respond to what people are trying to tell you and not be always trying to steer the conversation thread to what you want to be telling them about. You should be concentrating on what they are saying and genuinely trying to build on it rather than trying to switch to a ‘bigger and better’ subject or story of your own.
I find it frustrating when I listen to or am part of conversations which just leap all over the place where no participitant is trying to listen and build on what anyone else is saying. It is as if people are together physically but in reality are all still locked in their private bubbles with their egos.
If you do not live in the moment you will miss so much that there is to enjoy; you will not SEE the beauty that is all around you. When I am stuck in traffic I play a game and look for something through the windscreen that I find pleasing or beautiful outside. There is always something to appreciate if you look for it instead of just becoming frustrated by the delay. It does not matter what it is –there is no right and wrong in taste or interests.
Often when you go with people to a beautiful place they remain obsessed with spending the entire time telling you about another beautiful place they have been to in the past. One wonders whether they paid attention to that one either! Equally I meet people who when you go to a restaurant and have a wonderful meal they feel compelled to spend the time telling you about another wonderful meal they have had in a different restaurant. It is as if some people really are unable or frightened of actually living and experiencing the NOW.
So when you are in a beautiful place or having a wonderful meal or having any other exquisite or sublime experience please be there for it and not somewhere else in your head.
I have been in beautiful restaurants with wonderful food and views with people who just transmit the same repertoire of stories and anecdotes regardless of their surroundings and the company. It is as if they are trying to block out the here and now. You must be sensitive to the real needs of enjoying the moment which may be for quiet contemplation and not necessarily be always transmitting regardless.
The modern day curse of the anecdote has become so prolific and thereby so damaging that it deserves special mention. Telling long and rambling anecdotes has become such a widespread and prolific custom because people believe that it marks them out as a witty, funny and entertaining person. They require only a memory and not intelligence because they are learnt and can be trotted out over and over again. The problem is that they are increasing trotted out when they have little relevance to the here and now and thereby obliterate the real opportunity for an exquisite moment to be enjoyed.
I have been with people in what could be a perfect moment e.g. looking over a mirror calm sea looking at a perfect and spectacular sunset , when all that is needed is some quiet contemplation to savour the moment in the quiet companionship of good friendship. But sadly so often someone will feel the need to block out the experience by filling the space with a long and tiresome anecdote the relevance of which is only in the mind of the expounder. The group are dragged away from the present to another time and place and most will merely shut down or switch off and chuckle politely at the end.
Similarly I see friends and couples out together perhaps having a meal in lovely surroundings where the moment absolutely calls for them to be concentrating on each other and engaging and connecting with each other , but where instead they are just staring at and playing with their own smart phones. They could just as well have stayed at home in a small city flat as they are making no effort whatsoever to enjoy and be there for the real moment and life that is in front of them. Instead they are falling back into a habit of aimless playing with texts , social networking, and apps which is a comfort zone that does not require any effort to face the present with freshness and enthusiasm.
Be present for the people that you meet and interact with during the day. Increasingly people do not even concentrate on conversations with their friends and partner. Often people are just nodding but thinking about something else, or glancing at their mobile phones or the TV. You might think that the other person does not notice, but trust me they do and they feel devalued and disappointed that you treat them in that way.
You will have heard the saying ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’ usually attributed to John Lennon. Another way of expressing this is ‘Preparing to live instead of living now’.
Many people spend their working week looking forward to the weekend and their weekend looking forward to their holidays. But until you learn to live in and enjoy the present and the now your weekends and holidays when they finally arrive will be a disappointment.
So do not spend your life looking forward to things. The things you look forward to the most often do not live up to expectations whilst those times that you have little expectations about can often turn out to be unexpectedly enjoyable. Learn that you cannot predict how life is going to feel and be . Spending your time looking forward to things does not make them more enjoyable and is just another way of ignoring the present.
it is the case that for many people life is what happens to them whilst they are busy believing that for one reason or another they are being prevented from spending their time on what they planned or wanted to be doing. Instead they feel frustrated that they are e.g. spending it on finishing some other job that is taking longer than it ‘should’, dealing with some unexpected problem or accident, or having to talk to a stranger who wants to be sociable and thereby ‘waste’ their time. They are all the time searching for something ‘more’ , or believing that everything would be fine ‘if only’. The Reality is that your life is the time you spend stuck in traffic , is the time you spend mopping up the drink you have just knocked over, is the unplanned and unscheduled conversation with a stranger in the supermarket. It is the picking up of a book or newspaper and getting engrossed in something interesting, is investigating why the heating has suddenly stopped working. You really have to understand that life is as it is and is happening perfectly. Enjoy the ride and stop struggling. There can be magic and fun in every moment if you turn off that part of the mind that chatters on telling you ‘if only’ you were somewhere else and / or doing something different. It is in the very ordinariness of mundane life that the extraordinary reveals itself.