Spiritual Abundance

There is nothing wrong with having aspirations and a driven personality. One must be mindful while going through life and see each situation as an opportunity for learning and inner growth. By jeopardizing our friendships, health, and violating the freedom of other sentient beings for our own ...There is nothing wrong with having aspirations and a driven personality. One must be mindful while going through life and see each situation as an opportunity for learning and inner growth. By jeopardizing our friendships, health, and violating the freedom of other sentient beings for our own profit, we defile our own spiritual self.

If something in our life feels out of discord, we need to examine its cause. Leo Buscaglia pointed out that as long as we try to be who we truly are, we will not escape tragedies. What he meant by this is that we will always encounter external frustrations on our way to spiritual growth. We come in contact with bureaucracies, atrocities, hypocrisies, and societal injustice. When this happens, it is difficult for some people to turn and look the other way. For others, it is not uncommon to feel out of place spiritually and emotionally when they are out of place morally and physically.

Are you staying in an abusive relationship because you believe that children should have two parents, staying at a job only because it pays the bills or going to church because that is what your parents did? The list can go on.

It is important to remember that not doing anything is still doing something. All of the answers we seek lie within, no matter what someone’s faith is. One needs to contemplate on his situation and to seek answers from within his spirit of what went wrong and how to fix it. I use journaling and dream recollection to help me sort out my thoughts and feelings. Meditation, visualization, and prayer are also helpful. Whatever your style for inner exploration may be, use it as an inquiry tool.

Sometimes, I view a particular situation as a laundry basket that needs to have the clothes sorted out. I think of each article of clothing like a problem or an issue that needs cleansing. Often times, I wonder like many of my clients why things happen, what is the reason behind a certain situation -- why, why, why?

An answer to a why question may not be necessarily bring us any relief. Sometimes, unanswered why questions can save us a lot of grief. Innately, we all have the information we need inside of us to make it through life. I have an Afghan friend who had witnessed the destruction of his country during the war with the former Soviet Union. He used to say that when a person is going though all kinds of afflictions, he has ultimately two choices – to keep on living or to give up. Even though we go thought many trials and tribulations, the one choice we must make is to choose life. Some people give in to drugs, apathy, crime, and suicide. When we chose life, we must accept that we will carry our share of disappointment, pain, and fear.

I realize that to become more spiritual means to become more grounded in this life. What I mean by this is that as spiritual beings in physical bodies, we are exposed to the struggles of daily life. A person on a truly spiritual journey does not seek to escape life’s struggles but rather uses them as lessons for inner growth. Instead of embarking on a search for heavenly panacea through earthly oblivion in the form of addictions, greed, sloth, and so on, we must carry our cross daily. “He who thus is going to have knowledge knows whence he came and where he is going. He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.” (The Gospel of Truth)

Excerpt from Guru in Jeans: Inward Journey to Psychospiritual Awakening