Discovering Spirituality…
I am deeply and spiritually disturbed.
I have been a member of a metaphysics forum for about five years now, and go there to read interesting perspectives from people around the world. I go there to learn about how other people perceive the world, and to gain understanding about how I perceive the world.
A few minutes ago, I read a thread discussing the term ‘spiritual but not religious’. The author of the thread posed many questions about the nature of spirituality, delving into the topics of enlightenment, religion, tradition, rituals, and happiness.
As I read through the post (a very innocuous post, mind you), I began to feel a very tight and nervous feeling in my stomach. I was getting upset by the ideas presented in this post, the ideas taken for granted by so many people in the “spiritualistic” community.
I put my perspective down in the thread, but had a difficult time doing so… I was feeling very distraught, and I am still feeling upset. The particular subject really threw me off, and now I am feeling confused and sad(?) and lost.
These are the words I could come up with in the attempt to explain my perspective of spirituality:
So, people actually say they are ‘spiritual but not religious’? That’s incredibly bizarre to me. I don’t know that I have anything scholarly to add to this conversation because it’s throwing me off in its absurdity… But, I will try to explain my own idea of ‘spiritual’.
To me, spiritual means understanding myself, listening to my intuition and urges and whims and thoughts as they arise and taking the time to examine them – where they came from, why they arose, what I can do with them. Spiritual means “being in touch with my soul”.
I feel deeply disturbed when I come across a “guide to become spiritual”. It just feels so very wrong to me, because everyone is different and everyone needs to find his/her own spiritual peace.
I know what you are talking about – it bothers me when people try to force others to conform to the ‘no thinking peace’ they call enlightenment.
It bothers me because it goes against what my “soul” (innermost intuition) tells me. When I hear these people going on and on about “being spiritual”, it seems completely bogus to me. They’re saying the exact same things as religious people, just claiming to be outside of an organized religion. Honestly, it is fashionable to speak this way, so that’s what people do.
This topic brings up a lot of mixed emotions in me because I have always been “a mystic” (I see and hear things that cannot be explained by science or religion) but was forced into a very restrictive religion as a child and treated as damaged or “wrong” because I did not share their views. That stifled and dying feeling of religion is exactly the same one I get when faced with purported enlightenment. They are exactly the same from my perspective – there are rules that must be followed to achieve a predesignated goal. When I see people trying to force others into a restrictive definition of “spiritual”, I feel like they are pushing dogma, not truth.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is Spirituality should be individualized and unrestricted and found at one’s own pace, using one’s own intuition as the guide. There is no “right” way to be spiritual, because one’s spirit (combination of experience, personality, understanding, emotion, genetics, personal truth, and more) is unique.
Happiness, I think, is only found when one can find peace with one’s own past, present, and future. It is the acceptance of things as they were, are, and will be and the realization that Now is all there is – Now is when we can change and fix and shape our lives into what our souls have been trying to tell us we were supposed to be all along.
I struggle with this all the time – I do not know how to be happy. I don’t know what it feels like to be “happy”… but, I have found that I can find peace within myself only when I come to terms with the things that are bothering me. That personal peace is probably the closest to happy I will ever get at this point, but it is at least not turbulent and eases the anguish I otherwise feel. My past was shaped by other people, specifically when I ignored my intuition – there are certain moments in time that I felt my life taking a new direction. I remember those times, I can pinpoint exactly where I lost myself and lost communion with my soul.
I don’t think there is a good answer to your questions… spirituality is a very personal thing. It can’t be seen by other people
That’s all I can think of.
But, I am discovering my personal spirituality, and this is how I have come to recognize that “a disturbance in the force” – things just feel OFF for me, out of sync, like there is a tangible misplacement of energy. I don’t know if I believe in the Chakras, but that is how I feel – like there is something wonky between my brain energy and my heart energy and my solar plexus energy.
I need to figure it out. I am figuring it out, just a lot more slowly than I would like to.