Being Spiritual
Spirituality has become a buzzword lately, bringing with it connotations of religion, power, and questions of higher purpose. When people hear that I’m spiritual, sometimes they think I never get upset, or angry, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
We are humans living a very physical life, with feelings and emotions. Spirituality deals with the part of us that’s unseen, the why behind reality. It involves our uniqueness, what we’re here to bring to the world, and a larger meaning of life.
Living spiritually means that you’re looking to the higher purpose and meaning of situations, and intentionally acting in a way that’s authentic to you. While some people might be spiritual and religious, spirituality means seeing your life with purpose in connection to others, not necessarily believing in a specific god.
We are here to evolve into our truest forms of self, which means self-acceptance and awareness of our behaviors. It means actively choosing your life rather than playing the victim, and allowing life to just happen to you.
A great example of spirituality in everyday life is when someone upsets you. If you don’t believe you’re meant to grow here in this lifetime, you might automatically get upset, fly off the handle, then blame the person for their actions, before moving onto the rest of your day.
A more spiritual approach would be first noticing how you feel, and what emotions are triggered from within. Then, you get to rationally decide how you’d like to react, maybe even changing one of your old patterns of behaviour to one you’d prefer.
This does not mean that you allow people to walk all over you. On the contrary, it means learning how to set healthy boundaries, and standing up for yourself when appropriate. It means having awareness of the way you choose and responding, rather than reacting.
The key is that you’re looking at these small, everyday actions, and understanding the why behind them. Why do you keep getting annoyed over the same things? What meaning can you take, and how can you shift your actions to better support your reality?
By choosing to see life as a series of opportunities for expansion, you’ll be able to use the very woo-woo concept of spirituality to bring you you greater peace in the physical world.