IV. What Does It Mean To Be Spiritual?
While it looks like a no-brainer, I have come to realise that many people do not understand what it means to be spiritual. There are so many things people associate with spirituality that actually have nothing to do with spirituality.
First, there is actually a difference between been religious and been spiritual. So, spirituality is not about church membership and reading/cramming religious books.
Someone once contacted me after reading through some of my articles online, he had long suspected that Christians should be able to rely on the ministry of the Holy Spirit and birth creative ideas. He wanted some validation for his thoughts and asked if I could provide examples of Christians that have displayed high level creativity.
I obliged and sent him a huge list of Christians who recorded some interesting scientific breakthrough, they were mostly from the 14th century down to the 19th century and most of them were priests associated with the “Orthodox” Church.
The response I got was shocking; for he sent me a reply that the list doesn’t count because they were all – in his words – nominal Christians. I flashed a dry smile; he is wrong.
I also used to think that Holy Ghost baptism and the ability to “speak in tongues” was what made people spiritual, I have come to realise that this is not entirely correct. One of the most spiritual Christians I have ever met doesn’t pray in tongues, but he is immensely spiritual.
If you think about it, we do not consider Jesus to be spiritual because he read the holy books, attended religious gatherings consistently and prayed “in tongues” a lot.
Our claim is that anyone that learns how to be in tune with God can channel creative ideas consistency. That is all there is to it; at its core, that is all it entails.
It is so easy to forget that the beatitude simply states “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”. The requirement for “seeing” God, is to be pure in heart. ANYBODY THAT IS PURE IN HEART WILL BE IN TUNE WITH GOD, CHANNEL DIVINE INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY.
If you reject the works of certain people and claim they are nominal Christians, I wonder what you would make of someone like Bezalel, the man that built the Ark of Covenant. Ultimately, it is about been in tune with God, that state of purity, and turning away from rottenness, greed and corruption.
There is a need to stop been petty and cast aside our arrogance that builds up because we consider ourselves to be better than others spiritually. There are simple spiritual principles embraced by the most creative and inventive people of all times, these common principles will take us closer to unleashing our inventions.
There is no single definition of spirituality that everybody can agree upon, but I will define spirituality as rising above the petty, the material, the tangible and becoming part of something more. Spirituality is about acknowledging and patiently cultivating a relationship with God. It is all about becoming better in tune with God.
In general, true spirituality is marked by three things: love, selflessness and taking responsibility for others.
Around 2008, I wanted to shut down my internet company at that time, but I had no idea about what to build next. I thought about it for many months and got nothing.
Those days are long gone. Nowadays, my problem is not idea drought, but rather, an abundance of ideas. I have more ideas than I can tackle per time. If you ask me what helped me crossover from idea drought to idea abundance, the simple answer is that I fell in love.
I fell in love, not with a person in particular, but with a people.
You have to realise that the manifestation of your creative skill will range from useless to low level if you do not embrace empathy and compassion. Empathy is widely known to facilitate creativity. I can attest to it, I never connected with the higher levels of my creativity and inventiveness until I embraced empathy.
While sympathy simply refers to the feelings of pity we feel for other people’s problems and sorrows, empathy and compassion refers to the ability to understand, share the feelings of others and a compelling impulse to take action that can mitigate the pain or unfavourable circumstances.
The kind of creativity that leads to value creation as opposed to unprofitable imagination will be rooted in love – empathy and not mere sympathy.
The Holy Bible teaches us that God is love and in Him (that is love) dwells life and that life was the light of men.
When I began to genuinely care for people not because of what I stood to gain (money, recognition and fame) but because of “love”; a willingness to solve problems, I began to receive the light (ideas) that would improve the lives of people.
Inventions do not come from the place of greed or fame or a desire to make more money. Inventors are not looking for cool ideas to build. They simply focus on problems and try to build better (more efficient) solutions than what might already exist.
If there are no existing tools or frameworks or body of knowledge that addresses the issues, then they create it.
Advancement and inventions come from the place of love, that compassion to make life better. Creativity and invention does not happen in a vacuum.
That was the key learning for me and that was how I got on track. Over the years now, my projects have been in response to specific problems I can see in the society, after all people and problems are like Siamese twins.
Anywhere you find people, you are bound to find problems unique to them. Value is created by solving those problems. Making money is merely a reward for solving problems.
The principal projects we are working on in our company today, our business platform, learning platform and even my book projects all rely on this same principle. We are trying to see how we can add value to the lives of people and that can only happen if we care enough about them.
The more you love people, and selflessly take up responsibility for them the more practical ideas you will have for them. If nothing in existence can solve their problems, you will invent a solution.
This spiritual principle is also what lies at the heart of all great companies. If you search diligently and think about it, all scientific discoveries, and all technological breakthroughs are the results of a selfless search for answers as opposed to a selfish drive for fame.
There is always a tendency to avoid taking on responsibility, our first instinct is one of selfish tendencies and selfishness is known to be bad in the long run. We are quick to expect other people and institutions to take up responsibility but not us.
When you take on responsibility, you get to that place where you are compassionate and consumed with thoughts of improvement of the situation of people and therein lies the secret of greatness.
You have to realise that creativity, just like other gifts God bestows upon people is meant to be used in service. It would be weird to see someone with a prophetic gift trying to prophesy about themselves as opposed to ministering to the need of others.
It is the coming together of love, selflessness and taking up of responsibility that connects you to a true spiritual existence. You realise that you are part of something bigger than you and you will then get in tune with God to channel some superior creative thoughts that can effectively solve problems.
If you think about it also, you see clearly that love, selflessness and taking up of responsibility is what constitutes having A VISION.
The height of spirituality is having a vision, a vision is the culmination of love, selflessness and taking up of responsibility. Some have taken spirituality to mean poverty and lack, but that is not the entire truth.
Spirituality is not about poverty and lacking things. What is closer to the truth is that selflessness leads to a detachment from material things, which is good and healthy. Materialism is fuelled by greed and it never allows one to achieve spirituality.
The spiritual person receives a vision for a people and employs wealth to achieve the goal. Money is merely a tool and not the ultimate goal for a spiritual person that has obtained enlightenment; money and other material resources are merely tools to build out the vision and make maximum impact.
While ambitious people throw around the word: “vision” often, the reality is that a vision is always about people who sacrifice their personal ambition and selfishness in order to achieve some result.
We see clearly that it is hard to commit to a vision, hard to stay true to a vision unless one possesses the trait of love and compassion. It can only be God’s kind of love – Agape love – which is spiritual in nature. This kind of love is not mental or sensual.
Creativity is a spiritual thing, and it is enhanced by embracing a spiritual outlook to life, one that is marked by purity, love, selflessness and taking up responsibility for others.
When you do that, you will discover a new lease of life and achieve a higher level of consciousness, from that state, your creative abilities become more pronounced and with the right mental tools, there is so much you can achieve.
Overall, we see that the Christian model is empowering, grants you access to an unlimited life and recruits you for a mission bigger than yourself.