Transforming Spirituality

In this blog I haven’t yet jumped into the pool of effective spiritual practices. There are many. But I will dip my toe in the water with a simple meditation that I learned in the Excellent book Essential Spirituality.  I am going to suggest this meditation before I explan why I think meditation in its different forms is powerful and important spiritual  practice. I am doing this because not everything that works or is good begins with the mind or our rational thought process. Maybe it can be explained by it later, but often we adopt things in life because it works. This is a meditation you can do anywhere. It is simple and satisfying.  This introduction takes longer than the meditation itself. It is like meditation lite.  For the skeptics (good for you), its success has its basis in our own human physiology. If you inclined to dismiss the spiritual side of it, that is up to you. It will still feel good and be good for you!

Ready? Whever you are simple take a deep inhilation saying to yourself “This breathe I take is relaxing.  And as you begin to exhale smile and say to yourself This breathe makes me happy.” It should take a few seconds. Now, do it again. It is important that you smile. It is not important if you feel like smiling. What is important is that you smile and breathe. We have power in simple things. By smiling it tells our body we are happy, even if we are currently less than ecstatic. This is a simple act. But involves taking action. It is not passive Spirituality, waiting for someone or something to do something to us. I will not tell you how you will feel, after doing this only a few times.

There are phsysiological reasons why this simple exercise done repeatedly will transform your mindset. But the fact that it can be explained scientifically does not negate either its power or spiritual impact.

I think this is the first question we ask ourselves when realize we are trapped. But we are often not bound by physical contraints but mental ones. Often these binds are self imposed. What?

I will use the example in my life that began my real spiritual journey some years ago.

At the time I was a conflicted born again Christian. I was conflicted because my mind was at war with dogma, my heart battled belief.  Despite exploring deeply the depths of the Old and New Testament, I could not reconcile an omnipresent, all powerful loving God with the same figure depicted in church sermons as one who would condemn all unbelievers to an eternity of hell. It was not really the heaven and hell issue I had trouble with at the time (although, these concepts too have passed away), but the concept that God would condemn truly devout persons of other faiths to this fate.

Specifically, I did not believe God would condemn my mother to hell. My mom was a practicing Moslem and a member of a spiritual organization called Subud. And she was, until her passing, the most spiritual person I have ever met. The dilema was that the Evangelical Christianity I had embraced teaches the idea that  an individual must choose to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour to get a taste of Grace. God’s Grace was thing that let you past the pearly gates. I will not get into the specifics of my internal dialog now, but it was difficult. Ultimately, I realized I could not believe in a God that did want someone like my Mom in heaven.

I left the church, with a heavy heart. But left it I did. And that was the catalyst for finding my own spiritual path. Catalysts are helpful because they offer us real options. These options are simply not available to us, because we have shut them out or ignored them. And as I stood looking forward to an far more uncertain future, without the comfort of a religion to boltster me, I felt free.

This website is part of my current journey to discover what works and what doesn’t.  This website is a work in progress. I am not a guru or spiritual leader. If you learn from me it probably be as much from my mistakes and success.We all have our own path, but we do have to take the steps ourselves to get to the end.