I really like spirituality as this idea of “having your own experience” of using your own intelligence to find truth. How different our world would be if people really learned to see things for themselves. And it's not even really a learning, but an unlearning of your dependence on these false authorities who want to tell you what “truth” is.
You were once completely dependent upon someone else for your survival, so naturally you took on beliefs from your parents. Then comes school teachers, and friends, and religious teachers, and the media, and all these people who are going to tell you what “truth” is. And very few of these beliefs are even remotely original, your parents and teachers are simply repeating what was told to them by their parents and teachers.
Now imagine two people, the first meditates daily, eats only natural food, and tries to be loving towards everyone he meets. The second person likes to drink beer, watch television, and uses some very colorful language that sometimes offends others. The first person is obviously more spiritual, correct? Meditation, that's one of the core practices found in just about every spiritual tradition. Eating naturally is loving your body, which is obviously a spiritual thing to do. But that the second person I mentioned, none of the things they do are very spiritual at all, right? That's the kind of stuff the “common person” likes to do, certainly not the more spiritually-minded.
Now if you agree with the logic I presented above, which isn't really my own at all, but just a repeat of opinions I've heard, can you see how that contradicts the who idea of spirituality as “having your own experience”? How could you possible judge whether or not a person is really having their own experience based upon what they're doing? If it's really just about experiencing things for yourself, there's no such thing as "acting spiritual". You have to toss out all concepts of what spirituality should look like, and just accept people for who they are.
Spirituality itself is a rather nebulous concept though, it doesn't have any concrete meaning. There's various beautiful ideals floating around, but at the same time the concept hasn't been fully divorced from religion either. There's a lot of similarity in beliefs among “spiritual people”, similarity in the way people speak, in the way people behave, that tells me much of the spiritual community isn't really about having your own experiences. Sure, there are some people who directly experience Spirit, but at the same moment there's also a thousand tiny religions trying to propagate themselves.
Someone tells you something is true, you believe them, and you start telling others this thing is true. This is the most dangerous form of ignorance there is, and it's the root of how humanity has become so scared, confused and disconnected. This kind of dogmatic approach to “truth” is also very common among so-called spiritual people and I see near constant examples of it. This person has all the answers, this diet is what you need to eat, this is what you need to do to ascend. Laziness! As if Consciousness was given to you by mistake, and you're not really meant to use it, but just believe in what you're told.
The Truth of God is Here, in your Experience of this Present Moment. The Truth is your Experience, and God is the One having the Experience. I would be doing you a great disservice though in telling you what that Experience is supposed to look like. It's your preconceptions about Life that screw you up. People go on looking for God/Life/Truth with all these preconceived notions about what it's supposed to look like, when all you have to do is look. Don't search, just see.
Of course, people find this very frightening, you're exploring the great unknown, the mystery of mysteries, your own Consciousness. There's a security in having billions of people whose minds are basically the same as yours, but that security is gone when you start to delve the depths of your own Being. A robotic, repetitive approach to life no longer works, suddenly you're in uncharted territory and you don't know what to do.
It's perfectly fine to not know what to do, in fact, that doesn't need to be a problem at all, you can see that as making yourself open to wonderful possibilities. Be very careful about other people who are eager to tell you what to do, and how to live your life. Really, the only way to tell whether you should or shouldn't do something is to do it, and then it's a learning experience either way.
For an example, the spiritual community, just like mainstream society, is very concerned over diets. Now if you're really living your own experience, you don't need someone else to tell you how to eat. Healthy food will make your body feel much better than unhealthy food, and you can see this for yourself if you're really in touch with your own Consciousness. While there's certainly foods I would recommend over others, not everyone's body is the same. What's healthy for one person may not be for another, so I'd beware of the “one diet fits all” approach.
There's also this idea common among spiritual groups that says if you want to be Enlightened/Awakened/Ascended, there's certain things you need to do. This is the basic approach that every religion takes, and you can see the exact same patterns within “spirituality”. A religion tries to emulate a certain figure, and people think that by behaving the same way this figure did, they'll be more spiritual. Behavior though is very surface level, it's only a superficial change. It's easy to act like the Master does, but a real Master isn't one because of the way they behaved. It was a shift in Consciousness that changed their behavior, not a change in behavior that shifted their Consciousness.
Changes in behavior are more like signposts that a person is on the right path, but they aren't the path itself. Things like Love cannot be forced. You can pretend to be more loving, but you'll mostly just be fooling yourself. Yet, as the mind releases fear, Love comes naturally, and that's part of how you know you're on the right path. Likewise, you start caring for the health of your body not because of some expectation, but because it's the natural and sane thing to do. Peace begins to come not because you practice peace, but because you're released your inner turmoil.
But don't take my word for all this, live your own experience, or be tied by beliefs to someone else's. The choice is up to you...
The Galactic Free Press
No copyright, share freely
