Thoughts on Spirituality

We spend a lot of time trying to discover who we really are, find out what we should be doing and how to live our lives. We attempt to connect with our true selves, through meditation, mindfulness and just regular kindness. We treat our bodies well and love as we should, unconditionally when we can. We are kind to the planet and follow as best we can the recommended spiritual pathways. Thousands of books have been written on the subject of spirituality, from many different points of view, but who are we really?

I believe we are spirit incarnated in a physical body, living regular lives on this planet called earth and that is the problem. A spiritual being is made up of energy and colour but without form, spirit is thought, love and feeling not matter. When we are born into this earthly existence wherever we came from and whatever we knew before, the first primitive things that hit us are the needs of our physical body. We need warmth, food, clothing and shelter and there it begins our departure from anything we were connected with before. We have to find our way through a world based on materialism, where what you own counts more than what you do. We are programmed from the moment of our birth into whatever society we are born into, there starts the race back.

I believe we come her with a plan, we know what our purpose is and have a hand (turn of phrase) in planning our journey. I think we even choose our families and friends in returning to the same soul groups, but play a different part each time. Not all performances get a standing ovation, but we can hope we get it right this time. We know as spiritual beings what the objectives are, in our all seeing all knowing form we understood. In retuning to the same soul groups we will influence and challenge each other, assist each others journey and hold each other back. Until we realise this journey is ours and ours alone we will not fully make progress, that is not to say that a big part of our journey might be service to others.

I think we choose our challenges but that is  undertaken from a higher perspective, where we have what I call, the long view. We know what experiences we need to realise and overcome in order to grow and make progress on our spiritual pathway but we have to do it in a materialistic world full of obstacles from the moment we arrive. It does seem like a cruel trick, a difficult level in a game that we have to keep repeating until we get it right. But we do progress, I can look back on my life and see the steps I have made to get here now. I hate looking back, I’m not proud of some of my selfish and often easier choices earlier on. They say your life flashes before you when you die, there are bits of it that I see now and recognise as failure. But I hope I’m marked on my overall performance, what steps I made along the way and how much I changed. What if we get it wrong, do we have to do it all again, I’m inclined to think we do.

I believe in reincarnation, I’m not sure how it works but I believe in the continuation of the soul and reincarnation seems to me to sit nicely within it. So each life we progress until we reach a place in which we do not have to return. I’m sure there is more work to do after this but we won’t need to return again unless we chose to in order to help others. There’s a thought, say we return as a master and get it wrong, do we have to start at the very beginning. I think it can be easier to understand if you look at it like a game of snakes and ladders, each life is a new game and how quickly we get to the top depends on what we find in our way. It is so easy to land on a snake and find ourselves back where we started.

So we experience rejection, loss, poverty and illness here and have no idea why. I think that we probably have to come to a physical environment to experience these things. We are spirits learning how to be better and this is a stage in our learning, we need to overcome and find the true purpose of life in a place that doesn’t have the answers. If we think of the afterlife as a library and ourselves as students we have to agree we couldn’t sit our exams in a library, we have to find an appropriate place, an exam centre so to speak. We are all students working through the practical stage of the exam and we won’t get our results until we complete it, this might just be the foundation level.

So what about our higher selves, our greater consciousness, the part we tap into sometimes when we meditate. I’ve been told that we are connected by an invisible thread and that part of ourselves does not come to earth but remains in the spiritual planes. When we truly connect with our higher self we get the answers, because that part of us knows and can guide us in the right direction. I visualise my teenage self up there with my higher self, I think she can learn from her as could I.  One problem with any form of connection is that it is we talk with our mouths, listen with our ears and work things out with our brains, spirit don’t have these things any more so we have to learn telepathy or something in order to interpret what we think we feel.

Anyway who knows, sometimes I think maybe we should just let the mystery be and find out when the race is run.

When life goes wrong

When you take a hit and life goes the wrong way, it is very easy to blame the universe. I mean you can’t possibly blame yourself can you, that would be daft, it is obviously down to someone or something you have absolutely no control over, it’s not your fault.

I’m not talking about every day occurrences, your numbers not coming in on the lottery, your holiday company closing down with your money or your laptop crashing. I’m talking about the big hits, like losing your home and having absolutely no idea what you will do next, how you will survive. A life-changing event any way that knocks you off you feet at a point in life you were simply not expecting it.

These things happen every minute of every day to millions of people and yet when they happen to us they are catastrophic. Why, because it happened to ‘me’ and it is not fair. What have I done to deserve this we ask, friends ask the same and show pity, although from a distance on occasion, as a run of bad luck can be catching.

When I look back on my life, I’m 50 by the way. None of the awful things that happened along the way are awful today. They all led me to where I am now and until this recent bit of bad luck, life was pretty okay. In fact, if some of those at the time awful things, hadn’t happened, life might be pretty awful.

When I think back to painful experiences, does it still hurt? Although I can remember how I felt at those times and appreciate the pain I experienced, it doesn’t hurt any more. I’m pretty much all healed, and I think for the majority of the time, better off for the experience.

We trundle along in life, not noticing what is going on a lot of the time until we get knocked off our feet. Bang, bloody big reality shock, life as we know it has crumbled into tiny pieces, so small they won’t fit back together. This is how the universe wakes us up, lets us know we were nodding off and getting boring. These alarm calls are set to stimulate us, alert us to every tiny detail of our existence.

Have you ever noticed at times like this how sharp everything looks, how sound echoes and feelings intensify? Enter your true friends and out and good riddance to those hangers on. Although we don’t know it at the time these are the best of days, these are the start of our next chapters and we only have to turn the page to get there.

I have had a bit of a hit recently but this time I have surprised myself. I’m excited by it, I’m eager and full of anticipation for where I’m going this time. The universe hasn’t let me down so far, as much as things might have seemed bleak at the times, the universe had a better view, the long view, and I put myself at its mercy.