SPIRITUALITY

The Neglected Topic of Spirituality

2012-12-31T01:15:00.000-08:00

This blog is devoted to a discussion of spirituality and ideas related to this topic. While there are so many websites and blogs about all sorts of ideas under the sun and beyond, the topic of spirituality is a neglected one.

More Searches on the Body

By searching through the web pages we find the impression that this topic is not given its due importance. Using the data generated by softwares which search for the times a word is searched in the Internet it seems that the word “spirituality” is searched fewer, much fewer than other words.

For example at one time while there were 20,742 searches for "beautiful female bodies", there were only 1,019 searches for "spirituality". It would seem that people are more interested in beautiful female bodies than in spirituality.

But when we consider our life more realistically, spirituality is more important than a beautiful female body.

The body becomes worn out, ugly, tired and dead after a couple of years. But the spirit endures for years and generations to come.

Spirituality Not Taught in Our Schools

We need only reflect on the years we had in school to realize how neglected this topic on spirituality is. We learned so many things about our physical world in the natural science subjects. We learned also about our mental world in the subjects of philosophy and psychology. We learned about our society in sociology and history subjects. But we learned so little or none at all of the world of the spirit.

We had classes in Natural Science 1, Natural Science 2, Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2, etc., English 1, English 2, etc., Sociology, Psychology, History, but we never had a subject in Spirituality 1.

We might have had classes in religion, theology, or values education. But what did we learn there? We learned about religious or church doctrines, moral principles, values education and topics related to these. But we did not encounter the spirit there. At most we learned how to save our souls. But souls are different from spirits. The topic of the spirit was discussed more in Ouija board sessions (where we use the spirit of the glass!), in cases of spirit or demon possession, but not in formal subjects in school.

Subjects Related to Spirituality

Interestingly enough the subject closest to spirituality among high school and college subjects is not Religion or Psychology but Physics when it deals with the topic of mass and energy. You see, the spirit is energy, the highest form of energy. And yet we did not pursue the subject of spirituality in our Physics class. We were then interested only how to harness this energy to produce mechanical energy, electrical energy, chemical energy, etc., but not spiritual energy.

Spirituality Not Integrated in our Subjects

Furthermore this topic of spirituality is not integrated in our textbooks. The textbooks which offer a natural place for the integration of this topic are those of Physics, Religious Studies or Education, and Values Education. But textbooks on these subjects do not integrate spirituality in their pages. Instead these subjects deal more with the behavior of physical objects or the behavior of human beings.

That is why I have chosen to discuss this topic of spirituality. Here we ponder on more important things in life, the things that endure, that last for eternity. And we may be surprised to find out that this topic is very interesting also, although we cannot see the spirits with our physical human eyes.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Developing Your Spirituality - How to Enhance Your Inner Power

2012-02-23T01:22:00.003-08:00

All people know that they can talk, walk, smile, and do a host of other actions with their body. But most of them do not know that they can talk about things which they do not know consciously, can go to places without walking there, can smile to persons who are unseen, and that they can do other actions which depend more on their mind and spirit than on their body. These persons do not know that they have an inner power within them and that they can enhance this inner power.

Three Clusters of Inner Power

Your inner power is composed of three clusters of power. The first cluster is mental. When you think about anything, you are using your mental power.

The second cluster in your inner power is psychic or of the soul. Some use the word "soullish" to describe this cluster. You can find this word in some commentaries on the Bible but I have not found such word in the dictionary. The word "psyche" is the Greek word for "soul". When you know of something but you cannot pinpoint the source of such a knowledge, you are using your psychic power.

The third cluster in your inner power is spiritual or pneumatic. The word "pneuma" is the Greek word for "spirit". When you love another fellow human being with a genuine love, that is, without any selfish motive, you are using your spiritual power.

I call them clusters because within each cluster there are specific powers. The philosophers say that our mental power has three basic functions: to know, to remember, and to desire. The psychic cluster of inner power has more than three functions: knowing hidden things, foretelling dangers, seeing from a distance, etc. The spiritual cluster has also more than three functions although the most basic of these are to love, to hope and to believe. But there are others, like to discern, to walk with spirits, etc.

So, you see that if you are a human being you have these three clusters of power. You do not have to be strange looking, like the caricature of a witch, in order to have psychic powers. You have them.

These clusters interact with one another. The mental powers help the psychic and the spiritual powers. The psychic powers function best with the help of the mental and spiritual powers. The spiritual powers become most fruitful with the help from the other clusters of inner power.

How to Enhance Your Inner Power

The first thing that you have to do is to accept the fact that you have this inner power. There is no use trying to enhance something which you think does not exist in you.

Most people think that this inner power is reserved for a select few. It is not. As long as you are a human being you have this inner power. Can you form a thought in your mind? If you can, then you have this inner power.

Secondly, acknowledge that it is up to you to enhance this inner power. Nobody can do it for you. I cannot do it for you. I can give you ideas how you can do the enhancement, but the actual process depends on you.

Thirdly, realize that this enhancement is basically a matter of faith and obedience. As Emerson said, "The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey." I will suggest to you here two exercises which will enhance your inner power, especially your intuition and security from danger. But you have to believe in these exercises and just follow them.

Two Exercises

There are many courses out there which will teach you how to enhance your inner power. You can consult them. Some of them charge a good sum of money. Here I give you only two exercises. These exercises will hopefully enable you to begin enhancing your inner power. The other ways will be given to you by the Spirit who is the ultimate source of this power. After you do these for sometime you keep on heeding that inner prompting of the Spirit in you. You follow your hunches. Some call this the inner voice. I call it prompting because you do not actually hear anything. It is a prompting which you know is there.

Exercise 1. Affirm and feel your oneness with all things.

You can do this while you are resting, before you sleep, or at any time when you can pause from your work. Just say, "I am one with the things, plants, animals and persons around me." Then feel that oneness. Look at the things around you, the table, the chairs, the air, the light, the sounds, and feel your oneness with them. Look at the pets or animals around you, the plants, the trees, the flowers, and feel your oneness with them. You can even think that you are made of materials similar to theirs. You can think of the sun, moon, planets, stars and the spaces between these heavenly bodies and affirm and feel your oneness with them.

When you do this exercise you become united with the Spirit who is in all and who created all. Then he can act in and through you. He will activate your inner power to function as he planned it to be.

Exercise 2. See without seeing.

Again the best time to do this exercise is when you are not doing something in your work. You can do this while you are in your office, or on a walk, or in a place where you are not disturbed.

You take a look at the things around you or at the things beyond you. In a second or two impress them on your mind. Then close your eyes. In your mind with your eyes closed see those things again. It may take only some seconds to do this. Ten seconds would be a long time already.

As you do this, you will be able to sharpen your intuition, your sense of inward sight, seeing things that you do not see with your eyes.

Cautions

There are two cautions which I give you as you enhance your inner power.

The first is to be careful with your words. As you enhance your inner power the words that come from your mouth will become powerful and effective. For example, you can stop the rain by your mere words. You can control the raging of the fire by your word. Perhaps you will be the one who will be surprised when this happens to you. But it will happen. So, speak only good words to others. If you curse somebody that curse can be realized.

The second caution is more general. Use your inner power only for the benefit of mankind and the rest of creation. Do not use it to destroy others. There is always the danger that you will use this against your enemies. That is why some Christians have discouraged or even prohibited the use of this inner power because they think that it leads to association with the powers of darkness, the Devil or Satan. In itself it does not lead to evil, but the danger is that it can be used for the wrong purposes.

Benefits of Enhancing Your Inner Power

You will experience many benefits when you enhance your inner power.

The most important benefit you will get is that you will lead a healthy, balanced life. The Spirit in you will lead you to balance all the aspects of your life, physical, emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual.

Another benefit is that you will be warned of dangers before they appear in your life. The Spirit knows these dangers ahead of time and he will warn you of them before they happen.

A third benefit is guidance in your life, even in the least detail of your life, like the amount of food you eat. You will be led to live a peaceful, successful life.

There are other benefits but these three are the most important.

So there you are. You can now develop your spirituality, enhancing your inner power whether this power is mental, psychic or spiritual.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Find Strength to Believe in Your Abilities Again

2012-02-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

You may be one of many people who as they grow think that they lose some of the abilities they had in their younger days. And now you think you need to find the strength to believe in your abilities again. Actually you are experiencing the desire to wake up spiritually. Once you awaken spiritually this strength will come back to you.

The phenomenon of people sensing that they have lost some of their abilities as they grow older is common. Students in college wonder why they seem unable to get good grades when they had high grades in their elementary years. Adult singers ask why they seem to have lost that golden voice when they were still children. Even seasoned business people ask why they seem unable to prosper in their commercial ventures when they were so successful at the start of those ventures.

All of them think that they have lost their capacity to excel or succeed and they ask: How can I find strength to believe in my abilities again? They presume that if they can only believe in their abilities again, then they will once more succeed in their undertakings, whether these are academic, artistic or financial.

If you have experience this yourself, here are the steps you can do to find the strength to believe in your abilities again.

You Were Born a Champion

The first thing you have to realize is that you were born a champion. Out of the 200 to 500 million sperm cells that your father released into your mother's womb you were the one who came out victorious. You were the best. You were the fastest and you had the greatest strength among your fellow sperms to penetrate the ovum or egg cell of your mother. You had such a wonderful ability then. You are still wonderful in many more ways.

Most of us tend to forget of what stuff we were made of. We were made of the best stuff in the world. We were selected from the best of our kind. We had the best combination of genes, the best pairs of chromosomes to be born into this world.

You were made of the best stuff and the best is still in you. Do not ever forget this.

You Are Destined to Be the Best

Every year we have contests of all sorts: Miss Universe, Miss World, Best Actor, Best Story, Best Software, etc. In the Philippines we have a yearly contest for the Best Teacher.

These contests tell us that only one wins. And most of us think that we can never win in these contests. We do not have such a beautiful body to enter a beauty contest, we do not have acting ability to join the search for the best actor or actress, we do not have any ability to boast of. So we think.

But the truth is that you are the best of your kind. There is no other than yourself. You are most uniquely made, if we can still qualify the word "unique" with the superlative "most". Some grammarians think that is bad English but we can make an exception here, just to impress upon you the truth that you are the only one of a kind. Your fingerprints are unique to you, the thoughts in your head are unique to you.

Because you are the only one of your kind, you are the best. No one can equal you. Your abilities are all your own. They are unique to you.

And because your abilities are unique to you you can believe in them. After all it is your abilities. When you wake up spiritually you will discover again these abilities.

Your Abilities Are Always Developing

As we grow our abilities are also growing with us. In reality there is no limit to the development of our abilities. We see this on the general plane of mankind. There is no limit to what human beings can do. There is a known reason for this which will take time and space for us to dwell upon here. Suffice it to say now that just as human beings in general continue to develop in the path of evolution, whether physical, mental or spiritual, so also in individual human persons this development is unlimited.

You may say that your development as a human person ends with your death. History proves that this is not so. Socrates still lives in classrooms where his method of questioning is used. Aristotle still lives in the classification of plants and animals and in the logic classes taught in our schools. Our great, great grandfathers still live in us.

Atrophied Abilities Are Always Compensated

In our subjects physics and chemistry we learned about the law of the conservation of mass and energy, namely, that mass and energy cannot be created nor destroyed. In a similar way your abilities cannot be created nor destroyed. You were born with them and you will never lose them. But over time if you do not use them they become atrophied. They lose their functionality. They become submerged even in your consciousness so much that you think you do not have them. But the reality is that they are still there. How do you know? Because anything that exists exists forever, just like matter and energy. In fact your abilities are just forms of matter and energy. Therefore they follow the law of the conservation of mass and energy.

But even if your abilities are atrophied, even if you no longer exercise them, they are always compensated by other abilities. The most famous example of this is perhaps Helen Keller. At the age of 19 months she "lost" her ability to hear and see, she became deaf and dumb. But this was compensated wonderfully by her ability to speak (although she could not hear) and write (although she did not see what she wrote).

May I share with you an experience which may help to convince you that your abilities are never "lost" but they are just there waiting to be used or to be compensated. As you can glean from my writings I am just an ordinary fellow. But when I was a child of 5 years old I could read and memorize whole books. As I grew I "lost" this ability. But it was compensated by writing. That ability to read and memorize whole books is still inside me but it has been transformed into writing well.

Find Strength to Believe in Your Abilities Again

To once again find the strength to believe in your abilities, realize that you are a born champion, that you are destined to be the best, that your abilities are always developing, that your atrophied abilities are always compensated.

And finally think about these things often, especially before you sleep, whether you sleep during the day or at night. When you do this you will wake up spiritually and gain the spiritual strength to move on with life towards more and more success.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Contacting Spirits - How to Communicate with Dead People

2012-01-31T02:44:00.000-08:00

Some people think that contacting spirits, communicating with dead people is forbidden by God. But what is explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament is to consult a necromancer, a person who contacts a dead person for the sake of knowing what will happen in the future. Communicating with dead persons is a normal phenomenon if we understand it correctly.

A Simple Example of Communicating with a Dead Person

I open the YouTube in my computer, I listen to a video recording of Jim Reeves' song "God Be With You ('til we meet again)". As I finish listening to the song I say, "Thank you, Jim Reeves, for singing that song. It made me feel hopeful that I will see my loved ones again in the other world."

My act of saying thank you to Jim Reeves who died in 1964 is an act of communicating with the dead. Although he died 48 years ago I still communicate with him.

How to Communicate with Dead People

Communicating with dead people need not be complicated. You do not have to draw a circle with the alphabet and numbers around it and then start allowing your fingers to go to those letters of the alphabet and numbers. You do not have to go to a medium and pay her to communicate with them.

The reason why it is not difficult to communicate with the departed is because in reality they are not dead. They are alive, as alive as me and you who are reading this. They are around us all the time. You just have to call them and they will listen to you and speak with you.

Dead persons are like electromagnetic waves. They are around you but you cannot see them with your physical eyes. You and I cannot see the electrons going into the computer but they are there carrying the ideas and messages we send and receive. So also with the dead, they are as real as those electrons working inside our computers.

Here are some steps which I use to communicate with anyone who have died. You can try them out.

1. Call on the name of that dead person and think about him or her. You can do this orally or even just mentally. You see, the reality of that dead person is in his or her name. Once you call on his or her name, that person will be in front of you, in the spirit of course, since his or her body has been buried somewhere.

I had a friend when I was in the elementary grades. He was massacred together with his parents and brothers. His name was Benigno. As soon as I call upon that name and think of him, then he is before me. And we can talk about the days when we were elementary pupils.

2. If I do not personally know the dead person I want to communicate with I do some research on his or her life. So you also can prepare for this activity by reading something about that dead person you want to communicate with if you did not know him or her personally when he or she was still living. Like you may want to do some research on the philosopher Socrates who died centuries ago, if you want to listen to him.

3. Talk to that person who in spirit is in front of you now. Then allow that person to talk to you. You may talk to him orally, aloud. But do not expect that you will also hear his voice talking to you. He lives already in the spiritual or invisible world where normally you do not see or hear anything.

Those are the simple steps anyone can do to contact spirits, communicate with persons who died before us. Of course, it need not be said that in order for these steps to be effective you must have faith in their efficacy.

In the beginning when you do these simple steps you may not really get the ideas from that person but what you think that person is saying to you. In other words it is really your ideas that you are getting, your ideas of what the person would say to you. This is understandable because even with a living person we may have ideas of what that person may say to us.

For example, I meet my brother whom I have not seen for quite some time. Upon meeting him I have the idea that my brother is glad to see me. That is really my idea that my brother is glad to see me but that most probably is also his idea, he is really glad to see me.

So also in communicating with the dead. At first we may get only what we think is what the dead person wants to say to us. But with habit the ideas will really come from that departed. Then we will soon discover that the dead is telling us truths which we can never know except through him. For example, I learned so many things from Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa which I could never learn from anyone else, not even from reading his books.

You may ask this question: If contacting spirits, communicating with dead people is that simple, why don't we see or hear of most people doing this? The reason why most do not explicitly communicate with the dead is because they have not wakened up spiritually. They are still living in their physical bodies or in their minds only, not in their spirits. They need to wake up spiritually. My articles teach men and women how to wake up spiritually.

So, there you are. You can certainly contact spirits, communicate with persons who have died. Call on his or her name, make some study about that person if you do not know him or her personally, talk to him or her in spirit and listen to him or her.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Controlling Your Emotions - Tips on Taming an Over Excited Inner Spirit

2011-09-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

Controlling our emotions is a problem for most of us, especially in the present time. There are so many factors which tend to disturb our emotions. A spouse does not seem to respond positively to us and we get irritated. A child wants to do his thing and we get upset. A neighbor throws her garbage in our yard and we want to throw it back to her yard.

What most of us do not realize is that emotions have a deeper root than just our hormones, our physical or psychological make-up. There is an inner spirit who can disturb our emotional equilibrium without us realizing it. This spirit makes our inner spirit excited and leads us to forget things or do things which we may regret later on.

Here then are tips on taming an over excited inner spirit who creates imbalance in our emotional response to the things, words or actions around us.

1. Be Convinced that Emotions Are Controllable

If you want to control your emotions you have to be convinced first that emotions are controllable. You can control and tame them. The taming of an emotion may not happen instantly but it can be done with the cultivation of the proper attitude in life.

The conviction that emotions can be controlled is essential to their management.

Some people think that there are emotions which cannot be controlled. They give the example of the emotion of grief or sadness. When a person dear to us dies, according to them, we cannot help but be sad, grief stricken, cry, weep or wail. But I have seen cases upon cases of persons who do not exhibit the emotion of sadness or grief at the death of a loved one. In these cases therefore people do control their emotion of grief. Or maybe this emotion is absent.

I have attended Muslim funerals where not a tear is shed. The people attending the funeral and burial rites, young and old, do not sport a sad face. They behave in a normal, solemn way, respecting the rituals used.

I have participated in the funeral rites of Baptist and Adventist Christians. These did not cry, as we see most often in Catholic funerals and burials.

People are able to control their emotions. You too can control your emotions.

The spirit who is our enemy insinuates that we cannot control our emotions. And many of us believe him. We get excited over the death of a loved one. Just tell this spirit that you can control your emotions, whether they are of grief, fear, hate or other negative emotions.

2. Cultivate the Spirit of Equanimity in All Areas of Your Life

How do you develop equanimity, that spirit of calmness and being even-tempered on all occasions? By getting into the habit of having the attitude that the material or physical things we see around us are only passing our way. They are temporary. They never endure. They do not last forever.

Human beings grow old and pass away into the grave or some other receptacle and soon are forgotten. Our pets and other animals also go their way. The cities around us may sooner or later become heaps of stones and steel, as happened already with the famous cities in the past. The trees around us can be seared by acid rain, burned by wild fire, or washed to the seas by erosion.

Nothing except the Absolute Spirit and our spirits are permanent.

When I am praying for the dying, the emotion of sadness as we bid final farewell to a dying person is stirred within me. But I say to myself, this also will pass away. And the emotion of grief is cast away. When I am afraid in the dark, I say to myself, this will also pass away.

But you have to make this a habit. When you are confronted with a strong emotion or even an irrational reaction, like an ensuing burst of anger, just say to yourself, "This too will pass away". When you get excited over winning in a lottery, just say, "This too will pass away". When you are watching a boxing bout and you feel excited because your favored boxer is about to knock down his opponent, just say with attention on the meaning of the words, "This too will pass away."

Cultivating this habit will overpower that overexcited spirit who wants to disturb you and possibly cause your heart failure or a stroke.

3. Be Thankful for the Spirit of Calmness and Inner Joy

In the final reckoning emotional control is a gift of the Absolute Spirit. He wants you to be happy and joyful, not to be over excited and emotionally imbalanced. Therefore he gives you of his own spirit of calmness and equanimity. Constant fellowship with him infuses inner joy into your psyche and you live with strength to ward off all control of the unruly spirit over you.

When I am in a worship service where people are shouting, jumping, clapping and dancing all over, with manifestations of uncontrolled emotions, I wonder whether the Spirit of God is still there. Some ministers think that these emotional outbursts are signs of the real presence of the Spirit. For me they are rather signs of an over excited inner spirit who needs to be tamed.

To tame an over excited inner spirit, we only need to be convinced that emotions can be controlled, get into the habit of saying "This will also pass away", and thank the Absolute Spirit for his gift of calmness and inner joy.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Astral Projection - What It Is and How to Do It

2011-07-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

There is a way of traveling which does not entail any cost, either in money or in time. You get to your destination by an act of your will, not by riding any transportation. This way of traveling is called astral projection.

The strange thing about this way of traveling is that all human beings have used it although they may not be aware of it.

In the late 1860s a song spread across the United States which originated with the Negroes. Later this song entered into the mainline churches and today is sung even in Catholic churches. This song is part of the group of songs called the Spirituals. The title of this song is "Where You There When They Crucified My Lord?"

If you were asked today whether you were there when the Roman soldiers crucified Jesus some 2000 years ago, you would most probably answer, "No, of course, I was not there. I was not even born yet."

And yet that Negro Spiritual song expresses a reality most of us are not aware of. This reality is that yes, you and I were there when they crucified Jesus. We can be there again today by astral projection. We can travel to that time and place when they drove nails into the hands of Jesus.

I like this song as an illustration of astral projection because it has a line which describes what happens when you go on this kind of trip. That line says, "Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." Our bodies do vibrate or tremble when we go on astral projection. How did the composer of this song know that the body trembles? Because that was their experience, that as they thought about the crucifixion their bodies did indeed tremble.

What Astral Projection Is Not

Astral projection is not imagining you are on a trip to some place. It is not thinking you are in an airplane on the way to Europe or some other destination. You may be daydreaming but not astrally projecting.

Astral projection is not visioning or seeing things from a distance without the aid of your five senses. This is clairvoyance, not astral projection.

What Astral Projection Is

It is simply separating your astral body from your physical body and projecting or putting it in a place or condition that you want.

Now you ask, What is this thing called astral body? It is a body which we all have but it is invisible. It is called astral because it is likened to the star. The word "astral" comes from the Latin word "astrum" which means "star". It is likened to the star because like the star it is heavenly. In other words it is our heavenly body.

How do we know we have this astral body? We know it by our experience of dreaming, specifically the dreaming which occurs just before we wake up. When we dream during this part of our sleep it is our astral body that sees and feels things around. Our physical body is not involved in this because it is still lying in bed. It is still sleeping.

And that is why I said in the beginning of this article that all of us have experienced astral projection but are not aware that we are experiencing this already. All of us dream just before we wake up. And in such a dreaming state we are out of our physical body and are performing astral projection.

How To Do It?

As stated already all of us perform astral projection but we are not aware of it or we do not recognize it as astral projection, traveling at will to a certain destination or situation. When we do this during sleep we are not conscious of it and we do not control it. It is our subconscious which operates.

The question I want to answer now is: How can I do it consciously?

There are many methods of doing it consciously. I have found five different methods which produce good results. But I will discuss here only two methods which I use. The rest you can find in books and articles written on this. The authors I like are Jerry Gross and the team of Divina Ciencia.

The first method is making a conscious control of astral projection during our sleep. As I noted already we astrally project during our sleep but usually we do not control this. We just go to sleep without thinking that towards the end of our sleep we would perform astral projection. But we can consciously control this. We can go through certain steps before we sleep which will ensure that towards the end of our sleep or just before we wake up we astrally project.

In this method the first step to do before sleeping, as we are already lying down, is to relax, completely relax. The method I use to relax is something that I discovered when I was only 15 years old through an article in the magazine Catholic Digest. I think of massaging my body beginning with my toes going upward. First with the right toes, then with the left ones. Then I proceed upward. Before I reach my neck I would usually fall asleep already. That was how I was cured of insomnia. You may have other methods of relaxing. But do not use drugs or alcohol in order to do this.

The second step is to concentrate. When you feel you are about to sleep think of one thing, only one thing, and focus you whole attention on this. I usually pick up one item that I encounter during the day. It may be an idea, like how to write the next article or an object, like a paper, a pencil, the keyboard, etc. Thinking on this one and only one item helps in making our brain tired.

The third step is to let go. Just fall asleep. You will notice, if all things go well and if you are in normal health, that before you wake up you will have a lucid dream.

The fourth step is to write down your dream. Just a brief description of it will do. Write it on your notebook, not in your computer. For example last February 23, 2011 I wrote this in my notebook: This morning on waking up, these words came to me: "That was the turning point."

The reason why you are advised to write down your lucid dreams is because after a while you will see a pattern in these dreams. This pattern can point to a definite direction in your life for your benefit.

The second method is something I accidentally discovered in 1992 during a break in a seminar-workshop. During that break I went out of the room, stood outside facing the mountain, and I was surprised to realize I was already on top of that mountain. I could feel the cool temperature on that mountain, could smell the freshness of the leaves and some wild flowers, I could hear the chirping of the birds. To my greater surprise I repeated this experience with other places.

So, I reflected what did I do to trigger on this process of astral projection. The steps are very simple but I found out that they entail a lot of preparation. To do this you need to be spiritually prepared. In other words you are normally proceeding in your spiritual development. Once this is true, all you have to do is again 1) relax; 2) concentrate; 3) join yourself to that idea, place or person you want to go to by just an act of your will. An example may make this clear.

Last Arpil 1, 2011 I was sitting in front of the seashore. I enjoyed looking at the waves of the sea. Without physically leaving the place where I sat, I wanted to go to the waves and enjoy playing with them. This I did by simply relaxing and then concentrating on the waves. Immediately my astral body was transported to the ocean where I played with the waves.

There are other methods. Some take just a day to consciously achieve astral projection during a well guided workshop. Others take days, months or even years. This is because we have different levels in our spiritual life. Others are just beginning to be serious with the spiritual dimension of their existence. Others are already far ahead and are experiencing contemplation in their prayer life. So it depends also on the spiritual level of persons.

Benefits of Astral Projection

This process is not for the mere curious. If you are just curious whether you can astrally project, you may not be able to consciously perform this. But for those who are serious with this process there are great benefits they can get.

The first benefit is that your life becomes relaxed and you begin to have greater strength to do your work.

The second benefit is that you can enjoy places and events you are not physically able to do. When I am invited to an event that is impossible for me to attend physically I would reply, Yes , I will be there but in spirit. And that is what happens, I attend the occasion in my astral body.

The third benefit is that by astral projection you can communicate with your loved ones even if they have departed already from this earth physically. I communicate with some of the wisest men and women who have existed by astral projection. In this way I am safely guided through life. I meet them on the astral plane.

There are other benefits. But even with only these three astral projection is an experience that is worth consciously going into.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

The Power of Faith - How to Lead a More Fulfilling Life

2011-06-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

"Faith is a quality endowed with a most potent creative power", said Helen P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy.

You can read the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews to see what faith can do: it can show us the origin of this world we live in, it can put us on a harmonious relationship with God, it made Enoch escape death, man's most dreadful enemy, it saved Noah and a remnant of humanity from complete extinction, it gave Abraham a child through a barren woman, from whom innumerable descendants sprang, it saved Joseph and his brothers and their families from famine, it enabled Moses to form a new nation from the descendants of 12 brothers, it gave the Israelites courage to successfully invade Canaan, the land promised to them, it raised the dead to life, etc.

Faith is indeed powerful. It was by faith that we came into this world. Our parents believed that by their sexual union we would be born and they were right. We too produce our children by faith.

Faith is most necessary in leading a more fulfilling life. How is this done, how does the power of faith help us to lead a more fulfilling life?

Everyone Has Faith

There is no human being who has no faith. Atheists and agnostics are not exempted from this statement. They too have faith.

Faith is simply sure and certain knowledge of realities that are not visible to our physical eyes and reason, like knowledge of our worth, our talents, and our capacities. And everybody has this knowledge. The little child did not see itself coming out from the womb of its mother but it has faith that this or that woman is its mother. The atheist has faith that his ideas are correct though nobody can see these ideas in his head. So also with the agnostics, they too have faith in their learning.

I remember a famous correspondence between Fr. John Catoir and avowed agnostic Carl Sagan which lasted for more than 2 years. In this exchange of letters Fr. Catoir was insisting that Carl had no faith. In his explanation Fr. Catoir said that this man was unable to make the leap of faith. This is not true. Carl had faith. He had faith that the letter he wrote would reach Fr. Catoir, even if he did not see the priest opening his letter. Perhaps it is more true to say that Carl had no faith in the God portrayed by the priest, because the image of this God was foreign to the expectations of Carl of what God should be.

Faith Is Powerful

Faith enables us to live normal lives. By faith we know that tomorrow there is another day, although we never see the turning of the earth on its axis. It is by faith that we recognize our parents, our older brothers and sisters, our nationality, our community. It is by faith that we go to school believing that there we will learn reading, writing, arithmetic and the complexities of these three basic skills. It is by faith that we choose our work, our partner in life, our residences, our travels, our recreations.

Faith Leads Us to Lead a More Fulfilling Life

By a more fulfilling life is meant a life that is free of disturbing stress, that is more and more productive, in harmony with family members, relatives, and others. It is a life that enriches others and you know that this is so. It is one that feels and displays compassion for others, a source of encouragement for others, provides meaning to one's life and the lives of others, encouraging them to go on with life.

A more fulfilling life is one where a healthy ego or self-image is being developed, balanced in diet and exercise with self-discipline and self-control, productive, a life that makes you inventive and creative, bringing joy to others, and taking more and more control of your life.

A more fulfilling life is one where failures are looked upon not as a reflection of our incapacity but as reflection of our creativity to know the right way of doing things, as experiences for learning and growth.

It is a life of humility in success because you know by faith that it is not you who has accomplished the success but the Spirit in you.

Such is a more fulfilling life. And it is the power of faith that leads us to this kind of life.

It is faith in a being who is the origin of all that we see, one who loves us so much as to bring us to this existence or series of life, one who sustains us everyday with all the things around us. It is basically this faith which leads us to a more fulfilling life because by this we know where we came from, we know where we are going to and we know the way how to get there.

Maybe an example of such a more fulfilling life produced by the power of faith will bring home my point.

The example I refer to is George Washington Carver (1864-1943) who was born a slave and later exchanged for a racehorse as an infant. He met many difficulties in life, even getting out of slavery, going into school, teaching and doing research. But he enriched our lives by providing crops as alternative to the production of cotton which depleted the soil, inventing 145 products made from the lowly peanuts, and more than a 100 more from sweet potato, uplifting the Negro race. He achieved fame and was given many awards even many years after his death.

At the end of it all Carver said that God guided his research. He was criticized for making this statement. But it was his faith in himself and God which make his life more fulfilling both for himself and others. He said on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only way by which he could effectively do his research in science.

I want to end this article by quoting a passage written by an anonymous author which encapsulates what I have written here:
"Believe in yourself and in your plan, Say not - I cannot - I can, The prizes of life we fail to win, Because we doubt the power within...". Never doubt the power within. It is that which leads you to a more fulfilling life.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Find the Beauty of Life in Nature

2011-06-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts", said William Hazlitt. And so to find the beauty of life in nature we need another pair of eyes, one that is better than our pair of physical eyes.

The Eyes of Poetry

Poets have better eyes than us when it comes to seeing beauty of life in nature. They see more than most of us can see. We see a flower, they see a whole world unfolding before their eyes. We see a pile of garbage the poets see lush vegetation. We see a tree, the poets see a person praying all day. We see daffodils, the poets see stars.

We need to borrow their eyes to see beauty in nature. We do this by reading their poems. We read Joyce Kilmer's "Tree", Wordsworth's "Daffodils", John Keats' "Endymion", etc. As we read these poems a whole new world opens before our eyes, the world as seen by these seers of nature. They lead us to the hidden beauty of nature.

The Eyes of Science

Science is another key to discovering the beauty of life in nature. In science we realize the immensity, the diversity of nature. We discover plants and other organisms that never die by themselves. They continue to live unless destroyed by man or by a major disaster. Bamboos, banyan trees, water spinach are immortal plants. We discover plants that continue to have green leaves until they die like some species of pepper.

Science tells us that the ground teems with life and everywhere life is being multiplied in countless ways. Life is just superabundant when we look at nature.

One time as I was traveling I was struck by the fact that vegetation abounds everywhere and life is taking on different forms in all places.

If we have a microscope we can peer into the beautiful symmetry of the cells and their different parts, beauty that is not seen by our naked eyes.

We use the eyes of science in finding the beauty of life in nature by reading articles on nature such as we find in magazines like National Geographic Magazine.

The Eyes of Faith

These eyes of faith refer to those eyes which are given to us by the Owner of nature. We have been endowed with these eyes though we may not be aware of it because of the culture around us, a culture which pushes us to acknowledge only what is visible to our physical eyes. There is more to life than can be seen by our bodily eyes or reason. Reality that is hidden to our bodily eyes may be fully revealed to us through the eyes of faith. Faith is the sure or certain knowledge of invisible reality. Those of us who have faith know for certain that God is real. How do we cultivate the eyes of faith to find the beauty of life in nature?

1. Live with nature. Live in a rural area if this is possible. If you cannot live in a field but have been forced by circumstances to live in the upper floor of a condominium, bring at least a pot of plant into your room.

2. Listen to nature. Listen to the noise or music of the crickets, of the frogs, of the wind, of the typhoon, of the rain, of the thunder, of the swaying of leaves, etc.

3. Talk with nature. Experiments have shown that plants grow better when a human person speaks with them regularly. Nature has a way of conversing with you if you carry on a conversation with it. Most of us think that plants and animals cannot understand what we say to them. They may not be able to understand the words but they certainly understand the attitude with which those words are spoken.

4. Cultivate nature. Plant a vegetable. When I was young I planted eggplants. I observed them. I talked with them. I knew what happens from the seed of an eggplant to an old eggplant tree. Today I am fascinated by the banyan tree whose seeds I find almost anywhere I go. I notice that these seeds have intelligence all their own. When I put two seeds on the branch of a tree one of them would fall down. No matter how carefully I put the two seeds, only one would remain on the branch of a tree to grow there.

5. Rest with nature. If possible take a vacation with nature. Bring a tent and simple provisions to last for a few days and rest in a secluded forested area. I like to rest in our farm where I can commune once again with my old time friends, the trees, the fish, the birds, the plants. Nature is restorative, reinvigorating. If you cannot do this go to a park planted with trees. Or have some days in a beach.

6. Walk with nature. Go out in the woods and walk some distance into a forest. There you will find life in all its richness. When I did this I was surprised by the size of the trees in the forest. I never thought such huge trees existed.

7. Read the book LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: SAVING OUR CHILDREN FROM NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER by Richard Louv. You will learn here the necessity of being connected with nature. Nature is as necessary to our health and well-being as the food we eat.

8. Pray with nature. Follow the example of Jesus who prayed in a garden, in a desert, in a mountain. Faith grows best with prayer because in prayer we talk to the Invisible One. This Invisible source of all that is visible makes our faith grow. As our faith grows we see more of the beauty of life in nature.

The eyes of poetry, the eyes of science, and the eyes of faith enable us to discover the beauty of life in nature. Let us use these eyes in addition to the physical eyes we have.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Fill the Void You Feel Within

2011-06-03T05:13:00.000-07:00

You have come to a point in your life when you feel that deep inside you there is something lacking that should be there. You feel there is a void within you that needs to be filled with something you do not have any idea about. So what do you do?

Many Paths, Same Destination

You are not alone. Millions of people around the world feel the way you do. All of you have come to a point where you think there is something lacking in your life and you cannot define it. But you come to this point from different backgrounds and through different paths.

Some of you may be successful professionals: doctors, nurses, lawyers, government officials, etc. Others may be failures in their line of work. Some of you may be respected in your society: clergymen and bible women, evangelists, actors, actresses, role models in one way or another. Others may be just plain farmers or housewives.

Some get this feeling after succeeding in their chosen careers. Despite their success they feel empty deep inside. Others fall into this depressing state while trying to succeed and failing in their attempt.

Many Pastimes, Many Advices, None of Any Avail

Some of you might have tried to fill this void with drugs, with alcohol, with sexual excesses and chain smoking. But the void has not gone away. Others might have tried clubbing and pubbing, getting to know more people in a socializing atmosphere and drinking to your heart's content with your friends. But the void keeps on tugging at your heart.

If you have contacted some religious people they might have advised you to pray, to practice meditation, to put God into your heart, because they say there is a God-shaped vacuum in your heart which only God can fill in. A Christian might have told you to accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord. A Muslim might have told you to read the Qur'an and follow the will of Allah. A Buddhist might have advised you to look deeper into your self and see what is lacking there and contemplate nothingness. But all these advices have left you empty deep inside yourself.

You might have gone to a psychiatrist, and she has prescribed some medicines for you to take and mind exercises for you to undergo after patiently listening to your stories and complaints. But still the emptiness is there in your heart.

So what can you do to fill this void you feel within?

The Cause of this Void

Most do not realize what the cause of this void or feeling of emptiness is. And because they do not know the cause, they do not know the cure or answer to this problem. They indiscriminately fill this void with things which really do not satisfy.

The cause of this void is in our being, the way we are. We are beings who experience and long for, the infinite.

While everyday we experience finiteness or limitations, we also experience the infinite. Given any number, we can always add another number, even if the length of that number has gone around the earth many times. Given any information we always long for more information. We are always on the lookout for something new. And there is no end to this. This is the indication that we long for something beyond ourselves, something infinitely greater than ourselves.

Because we experience and long for the infinite we are always searching for this and unless this longing for the infinite is satisfied we can never fill that void in our heart. That void needs to be filled with something infinite. It cannot be filled with money, things, sexual enjoyment, gadgets, think what you may.

Fill the Void with the Infinite

If you want to escape this feeling of emptiness deep within you, then fill your life with the Infinite. Notice that I did not say God, because again for most people their God is someone who is just greater than themselves in some ways. In fact for many people God is a concept only. They have not experienced him.

You ask then, How can I fill my life with the Infinite?

The Infinite is in you and around you. You can experience him or her now. If you have gone to a field consider the infinite variety of plants and other organisms there. Within you there is an infinite power which drives you to move on and on. If you are in your office consider the infinite data pouring in and passing through your office, through your computers and mobile phones.

Acknowledge the presence of this Infinite and surrender yourself to him or her. Is doesn't matter what gender you put the Infinite under, masculine, feminine or in-between. In a sense he is genderless, in another sense he is gender-full.

Why do you need to surrender to this Infinite? Because he or she loves you with an infinite love. He/she wants you to live with you forever. He fills you with all the things you need in life. And until you surrender to his/her love you will never be satisfied in life.

If you are a Christian, you believe that this Infinite has manifested himself completely in Jesus. If you are a Muslim you believe that Allah is your infinite destination. If you are a Buddhist you know that Enlightenment about this Infinite is your goal in life.

The void you feel within can only be filled by the Infinite who is inside you, around you, over you, under you, and you fill this void with the Infinite by surrendering your life to him, accepting his total unconditional love of you.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Acknowledging Your Ego - How the Ego Is Connected to Spirituality

2011-06-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

There are many factors which have built up your ego or self-image, who or what you think you are in relation to others who live around you. Some of these factors you are not even explicitly aware of, but they are there.

Factors Making up Your Ego

To begin with your parents have the first determining factor in the process of forming your ego. The color of your skin, the contour of your face, the blood in your veins, and a host of other physical characteristics come from your parents and you formed your self-image according to these data about you.

If you are born of black parents your skin by the genes transmitted from them is also black. And you see your self as a black guy or gal. On the other hand if your parents were white you inherit their white complexion and so you think of your self as a white guy or gal.

But the image of your self goes beyond your skin. Your parents also influenced your image of your self in the society where you live. If they are well to do, then your tendency is to consider your self as well off. If your parents are poor then you think of your self as a poor member of society.

Teachers, especially religion or values education teachers, your peers, your neighbors, your friends, your enemies, the animals around you, the plants that give you oxygen, the total environment around you influenced the making of your self-image.

Redefining Your Ego

As you grow up you redefine or remake your ego. Your poor parents won in the lotto and suddenly you think of your self as a rich person. You got the highest score in an exam in your class and you think of your self as not so dull. A handsome man falls in love with you and you think you are a beauty queen in your community. Your ego or self-image does change.

Sometimes the image in your ego hardens and becomes difficult to change. You think you are the underdog and you fight anybody who comes to oppose you. I know of an old man, he is a senior citizen now, who has maintained this image of being an underdog from the time he was in the elementary school and he has no friends.

Acknowledging Your Ego

Most do not reflect upon their ego, who or what they think they are. They just go through life acting without reflecting on their identity.

But a crisis may come which forces them to reflect on who they really are. A courtship break-up occurs and the man reflects what in him caused his girl friend to leave him. He begins to ask who or what he is to himself and to his girl friend.

A valedictorian in a law school fails in a bar exam and she asks, Why? Is there something in her personality which disqualifies her from passing that exam?

The ideal and proper thing to do is not to wait for a crisis to change or redefine our ego for the better. If a person is perceptive of herself and asks the great questions of life (Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?) then she can begin to investigate her ego and acknowledge it for what it is.

You do not have to wait for a critical moment in your life. Right now you can take stock of your ego or self-image, acknowledge it and if you are not satisfied with it, then change it.

The Ego’s Connection to Spirituality

Spirituality is the life of the real you, the spirit in you. As the Christian existentialist philosophers keep on saying, you are an embodied spirit, a spirit enclosed in a body of flesh, blood and bones. And the task of spirituality is to discover your real self, who you really are. Once you discover your real self, or as some have expressed it, once you have reached self-realization, then you can function as a full human being.

To reach self-realization you have to cut your way through the ego, because in a sense this ego has blocked your view of your real self. You have an image of yourself as defined by others, your parents, teachers, peers, friends, and even enemies.

The first steps then in living the spiritual life consist of knowing your ego, acknowledging it and then discovering or realizing our true self. Once you discover this true self you redefine or remodel your ego to conform to this real self so that you can function as a full human being.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

What Is the Purpose of Your Ego?

2011-06-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

"How was the exam?" Somebody might have asked you before. And you probably answered, "I thought I did well." That image of yourself doing well in your exam was your ego. When the teacher informed you of your score and grade in that exam that image of yourself which was your ego was either built up (if your expectation was fulfilled or more than fulfilled), shattered (if you got a low score or one you did not expect), or just disregarded (if it didn't matter to you either way).

What Your Ego Is

If you look at the dictionary you will find that the word "ego" has many meanings, from the simple translation of the Latin ego as an emphatic "I" in English to the more complicated understanding of this word in psychoanalysis. But the meaning which is apropos to our discussion here is that it is the image we have of our self, or self-image. This is one of the meanings we find in the dictionary and it is one which we can use with consistency.

Your ego is what you think of yourself in relation to others around you, whether persons, animals, plants or simply things. It is your identity as you see it. Thus it may be different from what you really are. It is only your estimate of yourself. That is why some understand the ego as self-esteem. This image of yourself, if it is positive, gives you self-confidence. If the image of yourself is negative then your ego gives you the feeling of dejection and even depression.

Tendency to Identify Your Ego and Your Self

There is a tendency in you, as with the rest of mankind, to identify your ego with your real self. Most people think that what they think of themselves is what they are. For example, in underdeveloped and developing countries most people think of themselves as poor, as poverty ridden and unable to get out of the curse of poverty. There is even a joke circulated in one developing country that God so loved the poor that he made so many of them.

The truth, as so well pointed out by Bob Proctor, is that all of us were born rich. Our real self is rich, not poor, as those living in poverty tend to think of themselves. It is only in our self-image, in our estimation that we are poor. In reality our self is rich.

There are times when a person is hurt because he was despised for something that he did. Maybe he was not able to answer an oral question in class and the rest of the class laughed at him. He may not realize that what they despised was only their image of him as a dull student, not his real self. This is because we tend to identify our real self with our ego. He may in reality be a brilliant student although nobody knows about this.

The Purpose of Your Ego

The purpose of your ego is to influence the way you think, talk and act. Your ego is as it were the natural, built-in pre-conscious rudder in your life. It is pre-conscious because normally you do not think about this ego as guiding your life. If you think of your self as someone with potential for music, you are going to think of learning more about music and engaging in musical activities. If you think of your self as someone with a broken, out of tune voice, then you are likely to decide to overcome this musical disability or keep out of singing in the presence of other people.

In school our teachers helped to form our ego or self-image. If a teacher told us that we would not amount to anything in life and we believed her then indeed we would go through life not amounting to anything because that is what we think of our selves. On the other hand if we believed otherwise we would go on proving to ourselves and our teachers that we would amount to something in life later on.

We might have teachers also who praised us for our work and told us we would succeed in life and so we did. This was because we believed the image of ourselves as presented by those encouraging teachers. Belief led to actions which helped us to succeed.

So it is very important that you build up your ego in the right way, if possible nearer to the reality that you are. You are a champion, a rich person, endowed with so many abilities by your Creator.

If you do not have the correct self-image it is better that you abandon this and learn more about your real self. Then you form your ego or self-image according to your real self.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Keep Faith When Unsure of What the Future Holds

2011-05-08T03:22:00.000-07:00

May 21, 2011 is fast coming up. Some people say that this date is Judgment Day and October 21, 2011 is the end of the world. Some are sure that this is indeed the date of the end of the world. They have put up a website to inform people about this. Others are sure that this is not yet the end of the world. They just go on living expecting that this is not true. Still others are unsure of what the truth is, whether the world will end this October 21 or not.

Nothing Is Sure

The truth is that we are unsure of what the future holds. The high school graduate is not sure whether she is able to go into college. The college student is not sure whether she can finish her studies. The college graduate is not sure whether she can get a good job. The worker is not sure whether she will stay in her job, be promoted, or be dismissed from employment.

The father is not use of what will happen to his children. The doctor is not sure whether his patient will get well. The lawyer is not sure whether he will win his case in court.

We are never absolutely sure that tomorrow we will still be living. Those who were buried in the landslide these past months in different areas of the world never thought that that was their last night on earth.

Some of us have seen the video circulated in the Internet of a man who was walking and was suddenly overrun by a car. That man never thought that that was his end.

So we can never be absolutely sure of what will happen to us. That is why we have so many fortune tellers and they are getting a fortune by telling or pretending to tell us the future.

Maybe someone you love very much in your family is suffering intense pain due to cancer and its treatment and you do not know what her future is, whether she will recover, or get worse, or slip into eternity. And you are really worried. How do you keep faith in this situation?

Or maybe you have left your work because you felt that God called you to a distinct work in his ministry. Now you are unsure whether that was a wise decision or was it imprudent of you to leave a stable job to follow God's call. How do you keep faith?

How To Keep Faith When Unsure of the Future

Our question now is: How to keep faith when unsure of what the future holds?

And the answer can be: We keep faith by keeping close to him who knows the future. I like that sentence we learned in our Sunday School: I do not know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.

You see, for God there is no past, present or future. This is difficult for us to understand but it is absolutely true. Past, present and future are indications of time. What happened is past. What is happening is present. What will happen is future. But for God the past, present and future are all present, because he does not live in time but in eternity, outside of our time frame. Maybe an illustration can help to clarify this.

Consider a line as a progress in time. To your left is the past, the center of the line represents the present, and the segment of the line to your right is the future. Now put a dot four inches or so above the center of this line. This dot represents God's view of the past, present, and future. He looks at all this at the same time, the present time. To him all these segments of time are present at once.

Since this is true, then we know that God is sure of everything that happens in our life, whether it is in our past, our present or our future. He knows it from beginning to end and beyond.

Ask God What the Future Holds

If we keep close to him and ask him he will tell us what our future holds. And by faith we know that this is always for our best and for the best of those we love. Many of us Christians remember Romans 8:28, that all things work together for good for them who love God. There are similar passages in other religions, comforting us to trust always in God.

It is easy to say this but I realize that it is most difficult to accept or behave with this acceptance. What the form of that best will be we do not really know. Maybe it is best that our beloved member in the family go, so that she does not have to prolong her suffering. Maybe it is best for you to suffer financial difficulties as you obey the Lord's calling so that you put your complete trust in him and in nothing or no one else. Whatever it is, God knows what is best for you. He is totally sure of it.

You keep faith in this situation of uncertainty by keeping close to the Creator and sustainer of all life, the Lord of all that is happening on earth and everywhere else. Since he surely knows what will happen, you can ask him what the future holds for you. But do not expect an explicit answer as you would from a telephone conversation. God answers in many ways. Many times he will answer by leading you one step at a time. He will not tell you everything that will happen in your life or in the life of your loved one. But he will surely show you every step you need to take.

This is because he is a God who is passionately in love with us, so passionately that he gave up his life for us through inconceivable suffering. And he wants to have constant fellowship and communication with us.

The problem is that most do not realize this. Many call on God only when they think they need God's help. In the meantime they go on living thinking that they can manage on their own or that God wants them to behave this way, to manage things on their own.

Be Always in a Conversational Mode with God

But if we are always in a conversational mode with God, he will always be in conversational mode with us until the time comes when we can hear him constantly in our hearts. When this happens we no longer need to ask, How do we keep faith? because he himself will keep us in his faith.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to React If Told You Are Praying the Wrong Way

2011-05-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

There are a hundred and one reasons why you can be told by somebody that you are praying the wrong way.

Some Wrong Ways of Praying

These wrong ways of praying include: you do not perform the required ablutions or washing of your body parts before praying; you are not facing the west when you pray; you are not using the proper prayer mat; you are merely repeating a prayer formula over and over again; you are not in the proper posture or proper clothes; your mind is not on what you pray; and so on and so forth.

So, how do you react if you are told that you are praying the wrong way?

Steps to Take to Give the Proper Reaction

First, thank the one who told you that you were praying the wrong way. This is because you can always learn something from someone who criticizes your way of praying. There is always something to learn, to improve the way you pray. And so you thank her for the benefit of learning something new to improve the way you pray.

Secondly, ask her why she thinks that you are praying the wrong way. And reflect on her answer, whatever it is. You may be praying spontaneously and she thinks that you should use an approved formula of prayer. If this is the case, ask her why she thinks that spontaneous prayer is a wrong way to pray.

I have heard spontaneous prayer whose every sentence contain the word "God", like "God, we thank you for giving us this day, God. God, we ask you to bless us, God, as we proceed in our work today, God."

Some object to this kind of spontaneous prayer as too insistent on God, as presuming that God is not ready to listen to our prayer that he has to be addressed to many times, again and again.

Thirdly, ask her what is the right way to pray. And listen to her answer because you can always profit from this answer. For example, Christians normally do not perform ritual ablutions before formal prayer. For them knowing that people of other faiths perform ablutions before prayer can impress upon them the need to be clean in body, mind and spirit when they converse with God.

Fourthly, you pray for the one who criticizes your way of praying. You pray that she too improves on her way of praying, especially that she puts her concentration on what and to whom she is praying.

Fifthly, aspire for the perfectly correct way of praying. There is such a way, the perfectly correct way of praying. This is the way of God praying in and through you. Agree with what the Bible says that we do not know what to pray and how to pray. Only God knows the perfectly right way to pray and when he prays in and through you, he prays the right way always.

Only God’s Way Is the Perfectly Correct Way

You may be surprised to read here that I say God prays in and through us. But this is because left to ourselves we really do not know how to pray. This is the reason why some holy men and women admonish us to use the formula of prayers in the sacred books like the Psalms and Sura Al-Fatiha because the words there were written by God himself. We can never go wrong if we use what he wrote.

The best way to pray is still the way God wants us to pray. You can continue to learn what this way is.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

The Effect of Saying Your Early Morning Prayers

2011-05-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

There is a kind of water that appears only until early morning. It is formed at night when the temperature of a field drops and it disappears when the sun begins to raise the temperature in the morning.

This water is called dew. It is described as water droplets produced by condensation from the air on cool surfaces near the ground.

Early Morning Prayers Are Like the Dew

The effect of saying your early morning prayers—an hour or so before the sun appears on the horizon—is like the dew. You can get this beneficial effect only during the early hours of the morning. After this, like the dew, it vanishes into the atmosphere.

That is why if you do not pray in the early morning you will not get this dewy effect of prayer.

The Effect of Early Morning Prayers

The first benefit you get from the dew is refreshing water. It is water at its purest and coolest in the natural environment.

So also in early morning prayers the first benefit you get is a refreshing of your spirit, soul and body. Your body is rested and prepares itself for the work of the day. Your mind is also refreshed from the cares, worries and problems of the previous day. Your spirit is refreshed by the Spirit of God as he communes with you.

Water invigorates you. It gives you strength and vitality to do your work.

In the same way early morning prayers invigorate your body, soul and spirit to continue doing the mission that God has given you in life.

Great Religions Prescribe Early Morning Prayers

Almost all religions advocate early morning prayers. In Islam early morning prayer is prescribed. Early morning prayers are also performed in Hindu temples and in Buddhist monasteries. In Christian religious groups there are also early morning prayers. Some recite the Matins or the First Hour of the Christian Prayer. Unfortunately in the Catholic Church this has been renamed Office of the Readings and can be prayed anytime of the day. But the best time for it is still early morning. Of course we still have the Office of the Morning Prayer which can be said in the early morning, that is, before the sun rises.

The Example of George Whitefield

Great men and women of God who have made a lasting impact on our world have been persons who prayed very early in the morning, some of them for a long time before daybreak. It was related of George Whitefield, the great revival preacher of the 18th century, that he would frequently devote whole nights to meditation and prayer. No wonder England and the United States greatly benefited from the revival he led.

Make It a Habit

Early morning prayers refresh your whole person and give you the strength and energy to do your work during the day. Make it a habit until you say it in the land which knows no setting of the sun.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Raise Your Spiritual Vibrations and Share Them With Others

2011-04-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

It is now accepted that the higher the vibration of an object the higher is the level of its existence and the greater is its impact on the surrounding.

Take the case of the guitar. If you pluck its string softly it produces a sound but the sound is also a soft one. If you pluck hard its string it produces a louder sound and more can hear the note that is produced. The more strings you pluck the more notes are produced. And the listeners hear more sound.

Spirit beings are like guitar strings. The more they vibrate the higher levels they reach and the more influence they exert on others, spirits or non-spirits.

The question now I want to answer is: How to raise your spiritual vibrations and share them with others?

From Analogies of the Body and Mind

The accomplished ballet dancer makes her body vibrate, sometimes very rapidly, always gracefully. An interesting speaker makes her mind vibrate and so moves the minds of her audience. These two examples give us a picture of bodily and mental vibrations respectively. What is common to both is that there is an activity. The activity becomes more intense as the vibration is raised. And the audience catches, as it were, these vibrations, one through the eyes, the other through the ears. They share in these vibrations. And they are moved to wonder or to admire.

So also in the sphere of the spirit, the more activity he has the more vibrations he produces and these vibrations are shared automatically with others. (Notice I use the personal pronoun “he” to refer to the spirit, because the spirit is a person, not a thing, as is supposed by many. “She” can also be used.)

To raise therefore your spiritual vibrations you simply raise your spiritual activity.

Ways of Raising Spiritual Activity

There are many ways of raising your spiritual vibrations. They are all activities of the spirit. Some of these are enumerated by spiritual writers: meditation is a favorite one, and there are several techniques of meditating; singing and listening to music; dancing or jogging around the neighborhood; laughing and sharing jokes with others; walking through the woods; forgiving our enemies; doing works of charity, etc.

The Best Way to Raise Your Spiritual Vibrations

But I consider prayer as the best way to raise your spiritual vibrations. It is strange that this activity is not listed by many spiritual writers as a way to raise spiritual vibration. Perhaps the reason for this is because our usual concept of prayer is that it is an activity connected with the church or some formal gathering.

But prayer defined simply as communication with the Spirit who is the source of all spirits or with the spirits who come from him is the most effective way of raising your spiritual vibration.

You can begin with a casual conversation with the spirits. Then you can progress through more intimate sharing with them. Finally you can unite yourself with the Spirit or you can accept the invitation of the Spirit to unite yourself with him. This is the highest form of activity, union with the Spirit, just as among human beings the highest form of activity is the union of the male and female, producing a new human being.

When we are united with the Supreme Spirit we get his vibration which is infinite. This is vibration at its highest level.

Sharing Our Vibrations With Others

The ballet dancer shares her vibrating body with the onlookers. The speaker shares her vibrating mind with the listeners. The audience is delighted and moved to wonder, admire or follow the ideas of the performer or speaker.

The same happens when we pray. We share automatically the vibrations of the Spirit with others. The good that flows to us is immediately shared with others. The person who genuinely prays or converses with the Spirit or spirits wishes for the good of those around him. And this good is shared with them. No wonder Alfred, Lord Tennyson put these words into the lips of King Arthur, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

3 Ways to Develop a Greater Spiritual Connection to a Higher Power

2011-04-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

I remember 1975 as the year when the subject Communications was first offered in the university where I was studying. This subject was offered in order to deal with the dynamic flow of information within and among organizations. But it did not deal directly with communications of spirits among individuals and groups. It did not teach us how to connect with a higher power. Connecting with a higher power involves more than just the principles taught in the subject Communications.

Silence

The very first step to develop a greater spiritual connection to a higher power is silence. This is strange because in the ordinary affairs of life if you want to connect with somebody you have to speak to him or her. But in spirituality if you want to connect with a higher power, a spirit or your guardian angel or your God, your first step is silence.

By silence I do not just mean that you keep your mouth shut. You also keep your mind closed to the ideas around your head. You listen to the silence within you. This is because the realm of the spirit is beyond words and beyond ideas. And the higher power is in the realm of the spirit. Unless you are silent you cannot connect with the higher power.

Physical silence is easy to understand. You simply do not talk or make any noise. But mental silence is quite a difficult concept for most people because our brain keeps on working even during sleep. During sessions of meditation people often complain of distractions. They ask how they can focus their mind on what they are meditating when swarms of ideas just come to their mind.

The way to mental silence is like the way to physical silence. After a lot of talking you are tired and you want to stop talking. Then you stop talking. You are physically silent. The same happens in mental silence. Just keep on thinking. Distractions will come but soon you will be tired and either you fall asleep or you go into a state when you do not think of anything explicit. Then you enter into mental silence.

How long do you put yourself in silence? You can start with 5 minutes. Or you can do this for an extended period of time when you are at home or in some retreat. But the important point is that you make this as an attitude in your life. When you have leisure you go into this mode of silence.

In silence you will feel the stirrings of the spirit or the higher power. You see, the higher power is more interested in connecting with you than you are with him. But he cannot connect with you while you are busy physically or mentally with other things. He needs your undivided attention and you can give this to him only if you are silent both physically and mentally.

Childlikeness

Look at children as they play. Observe them. If you have an opportunity, go to an orphanage and mix with the children there, embracing some of them. Look at their eyes. You will find a higher power among them.

Children do not care about the problem of adults. They keep on asking questions. They are still fresh from being influenced by the spirits. The spirits are still moving around them.

And be a child again. Play with them. Entertain them. Tell them stories. You will feel being a child again.

It is on occasions like these when the higher power will also play with you. Our human bodies grow old, but spirits grow younger with time. When Charles Hard Townes, the inventor of the maser, the precursor of the laser, was 94 years old, he was asked how he could still work at that age. His answer implied that he was still like a child playing with the electronic gadgets that he was tinkering with.

Inventions are revealed to us by higher powers who connect with us if we behave like simple children, receptive to their impulses and suggestions.

Surrender

The third way to develop a greater spiritual connection to a higher power is simply surrendering to him. Once we are acquainted with a higher power and we know that this higher power is a good one, not an evil one, we simply surrender to him.

In surrendering to this higher power we begin to obtain his own powers, we become like him. This is because by surrendering we are taken to his own level.

Silence, behaving like a child, and surrendering are 3 ways to develop a greater spiritual connection to a higher power.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Ways of Achieving Your Goals in Spirituality

2011-04-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

Life is not what it seems to be. This is the impression we grow with. When we were children we thought life was a time of games and play. Then when we became adolescents we were worried more about our achievements in school. Then as we grow into young adults we were interested in what course to take up in college.

Many Goals, Many Ways

Life’s goals seem to be changing all the time. When I ask my students what their goal in life is, they usually answer: To finish college. So I ask them, “Do you mean to say that when you shall have finished your college course you are going to sit down, relax, and enjoy life and say to yourself, Rest for you have reached your life’s goal?” This convinces them that finishing college is not really their goal in life.

As in life, so also in spirituality. Our goals change. There may have been a time when our goal in spirituality was not to commit sins. But as we grow in spirit we realize that spirituality is not only about avoiding sins. It is more than this. It is living an abundant life, free from debilitating tensions. In spirituality there are many goals or rather, spirituality can be applied to reaching many goals in life: freedom from addiction of alcohol and smoking, a more satisfying love life, a more stable and profitable business, a more healthy mind and body, a more harmonious family relationship, a more confident self-image, a more intimate relationship with God.

And you ask: What are the ways of achieving these goals in spirituality? There are many ways. We can explore some of them here.

Some Ways of Achieving Your Goals in Spirituality

One way is by writing a journal about your goals in spirituality and the ways you use to achieving these goals. It is not a mere diary. It is a journal with a specific purpose: to periodically reflect upon your goals in the spiritual life and the means you use to attain these goals. You will notice after a year or two that your goals are changing.

Another way is by taking time out from your work and go into a retreat. You can begin with a retreat of one or two days. It does not matter where you spend this retreat. It can be in a hotel room, or in a religious house or a specific retreat house. The important thing is that you stop your work and reflect on your spiritual life, what spiritual goals you want to achieve and how you can do this. Later you can lengthen the time of your retreat. If you have the luxury of time you can imitate the members of the Society of Jesus who make a month long retreat.

An improvement on this method is by having a life coach around or a retreat master who can guide you in your spiritual journey. You can consult him or her during this time of retreat or even outside of retreat time.

Another way which worked for many in the past is called the Examination of Conscience Exercise. Every night before you retire you reflect on the day that has passed and ask how successful you have achieved your spiritual goal for the day, like keeping silence for 10 minutes during the day. Then if you have achieved your goal you set another goal and strive to achieve that in the following day.

Of course, meditation is a very popular way of achieving spiritual goals. There are many ways of meditating. It will be beneficial for you to learn more about this way of achieving your goals in spirituality.

Another way is reflective reading of a book on spirituality. More and more books on spirituality are published daily. You can choose one which fits in with your religious background.

There are other ways. There are even bodily exercises which can help you in achieving those goals, like the tai chi, the yoga postures and others. Some have tried drugs to achieve their goals. I do not advice this.

Choose what suits you and you will certainly progress in achieving your goals in spirituality.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

3 Ways to Experience a Spiritual Awakening Within You

2011-04-06T05:10:00.001-07:00

When I say that most people are spiritually asleep I mean that they are not using their spiritual abilities or powers as they should. They are like people who are indeed alive but do not move around the house, do not perform any work because they are still in bed sleeping and still dreaming. Here are 3 ways whereby you can experience a spiritual awakening within you so that you can wake up spiritually and do the works of the spirit.

Notice Everything Around You and Their Interconnectedness

This advice is quite simple but most of us do not do it. We go through life not even noticing one half of the material things around us, much less the spiritual things. We do not notice the varied shapes of the trees around us, the beautiful formation of the clouds above us, the tiny creatures that crawl on the ground and a thousand other things before us. If we are not aware of the things which we can see, how shall we be aware of those things which we cannot see, the spiritual things?

As you really begin to take notice of the things around you and their interconnectedness a world of super abundance is going to be revealed to your consciousness, a world teeming with the endless procession of life. You will notice the smallest bacteria that spoil your food to the largest stars above you and realize that these two groups of creatures are interrelated.

Unfortunately reason cannot discover this relationship. How can the bacteria be related to the stars? They are too far apart to be related in some meaningful way. Thus we reason. But if we begin to see relationships in the things around us, we will certainly discover the relationship of things even farther from the stars our human eyes can see.

We know that plants are related to the soil where they grow. Uproot them from the soil and they die. We know also that fish are related to the water they swim in. Take out the fish from the water and sooner or later they die. We know that human beings are related to this earth. Take out human beings from the earth without any support systems and they simply die. The relationship of these things is obvious. But when we realize that these things are related not only as material objects but as objects that have meanings, then we shall discover that any object is related to any other object precisely because both possess meaning.

Bacteria are related to the stars because both are beings with meanings. Bacteria serve to clean up our environment, transforming matter into fertilizer. And the stars no matter how far away supply the heat needed by the bacteria to survive and multiply.

When we realize the interconnectedness of all things we begin to see the spiritual element of these things, because this interconnectedness is invisible to our physical eyes and even invisible also to our mind. It can only be perceived by the spirit in us.

Perceiving this interconnectedness of all things we begin to wake up from our spiritual slumber and start to experience spiritual awakening.

Meditate on Your Relationship with the Persons Who Passed This Earth

Your great grandparents are most probably gone but they were here once on this planet Earth. Their bodies are laid to rest in some cemeteries but their spirits are still here. Probably no people have preserved this sense of the presence of the departed than the Chinese. You look at the picture of those who have left this planet Earth by death and they seem to be alive and still able to communicate ideas with you. Why is this? It is because their spirits are still with you. Their spirits live in the things they made, be it a chair or a book or some other thing.

As you begin to feel the presence of their spirits in the things they have left you, communicate with them. You will be surprised to discover that they can still communicate with you. You do not have to go to a séance in order to communicate with the spirits of those who have gone ahead. Just talk to them in your spirit. The famous Napoleon Hill used to call periodic conferences with dead persons whom he admired, like George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and others. At first he was afraid to reveal to the public that he was engaging in these conferences with the spirits of the dead. But later he was convinced that this was not an abnormal activity and its benefits could be shared with others.

If you maintain a healthy relationship and communication with the spirits of the departed, one day you will spiritually wake up with the realization that you are surrounded by a host of spirits who long to communicate with you.

Pray Always

Those two words are not observed by most people. They only pray when they are in trouble or when they need something that they think they cannot accomplish by their own power. They forget that they cannot accomplish anything by their own power.

Probably when you were a child you were taught some prayers but you think you have outgrown your prayers. You think you are now mature and are on your own. Nothing can be farther from the truth. As you grow older you need to pray more, not just about more things but more often. And you need to learn how to pray always, even when you are in a most intense activity.

I once discovered a group of men who pray more than the priests or the Religious in monasteries. They are the linemen who work with the electrical power cables. The priests or the Religious go to their Masses and their scheduled prayer time. But after that they usually devote their time to their work. But the linemen have to pray as they go to their work of installing or repairing electrical wires. As they hung on to the poles they keep praying that they be preserved from sudden death. They know that they can lose their lives with one minor mistake. And after their work they keep on praying with thanksgiving for being preserved from electrocution. These linemen tell me that they pray 24 hours a day because they do not know when they will be called to repair an electrical line. Emergencies cannot be predicted.

When you are able to pray always, conversing with the Spirit of all spirits about anything that matters to you, you shall be on the road to full spiritual awakening within you.

These are the three ways to experience a spiritual awakening within you: 1) Notice everything around you and their interconnectedness; 2) Meditate on your relationship with the persons who passed this earth; 3) Learn to pray always.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How Do You Determine Your Vision of Heaven?

2011-03-10T03:25:00.000-08:00

"Heaven" is a word that means different things to different people, even to those who belong to the same religion. In the town where I graduated High School, there was a house with a signboard on top of it, "Blue Heaven". It was a brothel.

Different Visions of Heaven

If you are a Christian you would think of heaven as a place where you will see God face to face after you die, although there are some Christians who think that immediately after death the soul does not go anywhere but sleeps in the tomb. Your idea of heaven would be colored by the picture of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.

If you are a Muslim your idea of heaven is that it is a place where there is a garden where the fruits are continuously ever produced by the plants. There you wear fine clothes, keep on eating in banquets, recline on couches of gold or precious stones, surrounded by your loved ones.

If you are a Buddhist your view of heaven is that it is state where you will be perfectly enlightened and you will be freed from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Other religions have other views of heaven. Some think of it as a real place, others think of it more as a state or condition of being or existence. Some think of it as a place with different layers or levels of existence. Others think of it as just one flat place.

Many books and movies have been made which depict an aspect of heaven. But now that you have grown up and have your opinion on certain things like love, marriage, family, politics, economics, you want to have a more realistic or more genuine view of heaven. After all most believe that this is where we go to after we die if we do not end up in its opposite, hell. So, you are interested on forming your own vision of heaven.

Since heaven means so many things to different people, how do you determine your own vision of heaven?

You Determine Your Vision of Heaven by Following These Steps

First, think of what is the most happy way to exist. You may arrive at a conclusion that to be most happy means that you are free from all needs and sickness. You have all that you need and desire. And you will no longer be subject to death and sickness.

Secondly, you have to think of heaven in terms of relationship. On earth you have a family. You cannot think of heaven as a place where the love you have for your family is gone. You think of it as a place or state where you will be reunited with your family and where your love will ever grow.

Thirdly, you bring in the existence of spirits. Almost all religions think of heaven as a place where the beings we cannot see on earth will be seen by eyes. Heaven is a place or condition where you will have the company of these spirits.

Fourthly, you will have to bring in your concept of God or gods. Whether you believe in one God or plural gods, you will think of heaven as the abode or condition of God or gods. Here you will see the source or origin of all creation. For a Christian she will have to look up to Jesus the author and finisher of her faith and begin living in heaven while physically still on earth.

Fifthly, you bring in the most forgotten element of heaven: visible creation besides human beings--the plants, the animals, and inert matter. Here on earth we do not think much of them. We pull out a shrub and forget about it. We slap a mosquito and care not much about it. Animals will be there but they will no longer be harmful. Plants will be there but they will no longer be poisonous. And lots of silver, gold, iron will be there.

As you think about these ideas, you will be able to determine your vision of heaven. When we get there, we may be surprised that the place or state of heaven exceeds our wildest imagination or dreams while we were on earth.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Properly Release the Negative Energy Built Up Inside You

2011-03-10T02:41:00.000-08:00

There is a pollution that is worse than air, water or soil pollution. It is a pollution which creates world wars.

Air pollution contaminates the oxygen we breathe and eventually chokes us. Water pollution makes dirty the water we need to drink and so poisons our body. Soil pollution produces toxic wastes which eventually enters our physical system. But all these forms of pollution only touch our bodies and only indirectly touch our minds.

A Pollution Worse Than Air, Water and Soil Pollution

But a pollution worse than these forms of pollution directly affects our minds and turns them into an arsenal of negative energy which fuels discords, disagreements, conflicts and eventually wars.

This is the pollution of negative energy around us and inside us.

Writers who discuss energy pollution usually single out only noise, heat and light pollution. They do not realize that energy pollution extends beyond the noise, the heat and light around us.

Pollution of negative energy contaminates the heart of human beings with hate, resentment, anger, envy, jealousy, fear, doubt and a host of other negative emotions.

How Do You Properly Dispose of This Negative Energy?

The problem is how do you properly release this kind of energy built up inside you so that it does not contaminate you and others?

Today everywhere students are taught on proper waste disposal or management: segregate the waste, then re-use, re-cycle, and re-turn the rest safely to the earth. But they are not taught how to properly dispose of harmful energy that piles up within them: anger, hate, fear, etc.

In some houses when husband and wife fight they throw things around and away. Their throwing of things is a symbolic gesture of throwing the bad feelings they have towards each other. But this does not work well. Things are destroyed and after the fight, essential furniture has to be bought again or repaired.

Negative energy is like garbage. If you do not dispose of it properly it will pollute the atmosphere. This energy and negative emotions between a fighting husband and wife spread to their children, neighbors and in-laws. Negative energy between nations eventually becomes war.

So how do you properly release the negative energy built up inside you so that it does not pollute the atmosphere?

The First Step: Understand What Negative Energy Is

What you need to consider first if you want to properly release this negative energy is to understand that it is a negative energy. It is not a positive energy. Because it is negative, you cannot throw it away properly. It is an energy which is the lack of something. You cannot throw something that is not there. That is why it is called negative because it is a lack. There is something lacking in that energy.

Positive energy is the presence of something. That is why it is called positive. It posits something to be there. Its opposite is the absence of something. That is why it is called negative, it negates something which should be there.

Anger, resentment, hate, and such like emotions are forms of non-positive energy. They lack something. Anger lacks kindness, resentment lacks acceptance, hate lacks love.

Second Step: Put in Positive Emotions

After realizing that negative emotions or energy expresses a lack, you need to fill the lack with a positive emotion. Feed your anger with kindness, your resentment with acceptance, your hating somebody with love. If you can, say that Prayer of Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone which starts with the words “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow your love.”

Now you may object. That precisely is your problem, you cannot put positive energy into your negative emotions, you cannot put kindness into your angry heart, you cannot put love where you feel just hate, etc.

Third Step: Realize the Importance of Having Positive Instead of Negative Emotions

So the third step is to realize that in the long run the harmful energies and emotions are going to destroy your life, if you do not dispose of them properly. And the only way to dispose of them properly is by putting in positive emotions and energy in that part of your life which lack these.

Choose Wisely

In the final analysis, the choice is up to you. You can live positively or you can live negatively. You can live with fullness of joy, happiness, and love or you can choose to live with the lack of these making you morose, sad and hateful. Dispose of your negative emotions and energies properly by putting in the positive emotions and energies. With time and with the help of your God, whatever and whoever you conceive him to be, you will become a positive person, full of warmth, vigor and joy.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Connecting With Spirits - How to Connect With the Supernatural

2011-02-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

When I was a boy our family radio was stolen. After days of investigating who the thief was, he or she was not identified. Somebody suggested that we use the Ouija board to help us identify the thief. Sure enough the Ouija board spelled out the name of the thief. She was our neighbor. But the neighbor denied that she was the thief.

Connecting With Spirits Through the Ouija Board

Ouija board is a way of connecting with spirits. When we used the Ouija board on that occasion to identify the thief, we invoked the spirit of Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero who was executed for treason against the Spanish government in Manila. On other occasions we would invoke the spirit of the glass. We used a drinking glass rather than a planchette to point to the letters in the alphabet and numbers.

The Ouija board game is so popular that there are warnings from well-informed persons of the dangers of using this method to contact the spirits. Most of the warning comes from evangelical Christians. Psychologists on the other hand say that the movement of pointing to the letters of the alphabet and numbers is done by the subconscious mind of those participating in this game.

My opinion is that using the Ouija board to connect with the spirits is dangerous. While playing this game it is possible that some evil spirits will possess the participants and force them to do involuntary actions. There have been reports where this possession of spirits occurred.

To Connect With Spirits Unlearn

If you want to really connect with spirits and the supernatural in a safe way you need first to unlearn some things, especially if you have been educated through the Western system of education.

In the Western system of education we were taught that the world is composed of living and non-living things. We learned this in our high school biology and chemistry. This idea goes back to Aristotle who was instrumental in classifying the many plants and animals around us. Many of us memorized the phyla and families of these plants and animals.

We have to unlearn this idea of dividing things into living and non-living. The truth is that all things are living, even the dust we step on our way to work. Some primitive people, like the Mangyans of Mindoro, Philippines, instinctively know this truth that all things, even the stones, are living. They have not gone through this Western type of education.

All things are living because there is a spirit in all of them or, to put it in another way, all things are in spirit. There is no way something or somebody cannot be in spirit and yet exist. Just as matter occupies space or is in space, so also anything, whether matter or energy or anything else, is in spirit.

A person trained in Aristotelian logic may insist: But if you do not distinguish between living and non-living things, then what do you call the person who dies? Is he still living when you know that he is already dead, non-living?

My answer to that is that the person has stopped breathing, his body parts have ceased to function but he is still living. He has gone to another mode of living, and his body has gone into another mode of living because the body is still there although we call it a corpse.

Another idea we have to unlearn is the division of beings into natural and supernatural. We were taught in our religion classes that natural beings are the beings we can perceive with our senses and our reason. Supernatural beings are those divine and angelic beings, the spirits whom we cannot perceive by our senses and reason alone.

This division is misleading because we think that supernatural beings are above us in space and in ability. The prefix “super” literally means “above” in the original Latin. It makes us imagine that they are up there in the heavens and they can do more, much more than what we can do.

Experience tells us that the so-called supernatural world, the spirit world, is just around us, not just above us. We are in it and it is in us. As Jesus said, The kingdom of God is within you.

Having gotten rid of these two ideas of the division of things into living and non-living, and the division of beings into natural and supernatural, we now know that all things are living, are infused with spirit, and that we are living in a supernatural world and the spirits are living in our natural world. The so-called natural and supernatural worlds intermingle. There is really no need to distinguish them.

Spirits Are Always in Contact With Us

Having learned this truth and having been convinced of this reality, we now know that the spirits are always in contact with us. The analogy I can think of to illustrate this point is the analogy of the electromagnetic waves.

Electromagnetic waves are all around us and go through us. They are the medium of radio and TV waves. Without the radio or TV receiver we would not know their existence by our five senses. But a live radio or TV functions because of these electromagnetic waves.

So also the spirits are all around us. It is we who fail to acknowledge their presence because of our upbringing. Because they are all around us we can connect with them anytime as long as we go on the spiritual mode. Just like we can connect with the radio station anytime as long as our receiver is on the same frequency as that of the radio station. But contacting the spirits is not like contacting our neighbors through our speech or bodies. Spirits do not have mouths or bodies. But they have intelligence, thoughts. We contact them by giving them our thoughts. We project to them our thoughts and they project to us their thoughts.

How We Connect With the Spirits

In the beginning of living in the spirit, burning incense, periods of deep meditation, chanting a mantra may help us in invoking the palpable action of the spirits upon us. But as we progress in our spiritual living communication with the spirits become habitual and simply natural and normal.

We communicate with Spirit God, the spirit angels or messengers, the spirits of persons dead or alive, the spirits of animals, of plants, of minerals, of earth elements. We do this simply by passing to them our thoughts, our ideas. Then they answer us by passing to us their thoughts, their ideas.

How do you know you are really communicating with the spirits and not just imagining that you are communicating with them? You know because you are in a spiritual mode, meaning you are on the same level or frequency with them. Just like you know that the radio is connected to the station because its receiver is on the same frequency as that of the radio station and sound is being produced from your radio.

All this is done by faith. Just as we see things through our body with our eyes, so also we see things through our spirit by our faith. Faith is the spiritual vision. Faith is the knob we turn to tune in to the spirit world. By faith we listen to what the spirits are telling us. Just as we were born normally with eyes to see, so also we exist as spirits normally equipped with faith to see spiritual things. The more we use this faculty or ability of faith, the more useful it is for us.

First, we think of the spirit we wish to contact. Then, we communicate with him our thought by just telling him our idea through our mind. Then we pause and listen in our mind for the idea from the spirit. The idea from the spirit will come. That is how simple it is. But we do this by faith and in faith.

There is no need to use the Ouija board to connect with spirits, with the supernatural. We have faith. We simply use it.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Open Your Sixth Sense

2011-02-09T01:10:00.000-08:00

It was necessity which forced me to use my sixth sense before I even understood what this sixth sense was. As with our five ordinary senses we use them first before ever understanding what they are.

Deceptive Teachers Made Me Stumble into My Sixth Sense

In college I had teachers who would mislead us by telling us to study certain topics for the examination when they intended to give us other topics for that examination. For example, one teacher told us that our examination would be about verbs. When we got the examination questions they were all about nouns, nothing about verbs.

I was desperate in passing my examinations because my scholarship depended on getting high grades in my subjects. But if I trusted the word of those teachers who misled us in announcing the topics for the examinations I would get zero because I would study something which would not come out in the actual examination.

So I had to find ways to know, really know what would be the actual examination questions. The ordinary way to do this was to go to the room of those teachers and look at the questions they wrote for the examination. But to do this I would be accused of trespassing and also cheating if I got the actual questions.

What I did was to condition my mind. I would visualize what the teachers thought, then I would visualize the questions that he wrote for the examination. At first it did not work so well. But with constant practice I got to know the questions before the day of the examination. So I tried to study the answers to those questions. Sure enough when the examination papers were corrected I got the highest scores.

This was a case of using my sixth sense before I even understood what it was. My sixth sense revealed to me what my physical eyes could not see, the actual questions hid by the teachers in their rooms.

All of Us Have a Sixth Sense

If a normal person has five senses, she also has the sixth sense. She may not use it often or as often as she needs it but it is there. It is part of the creation of the Spirit in us.

As the dictionary defines it the sixth sense is "A power of perception seemingly independent of the five senses; keen intuition." Some call it ESP or Extra Sensory Perception.

So the question I want to answer is: How to open your sixth sense?

Why Open Your Sixth Sense?

But first we ask, Why do we open it? The answer is because for most people their sixth sense is, as it were, closed. It is like the closed eyes which cannot see, cannot be used as long as these are closed. So just as we have to open our eyes to use them, we have to open our sixth sense to use it.

The Steps to Open Your Sixth Sense

The first step you need to do is to be more aware of your five ordinary senses: the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The reason for this is that the sixth sense uses these five senses. Intuition is partly a result of the combination of these senses. Let me illustrate by a simple example.

You are working on your computer. Then your sense of smell tells you there is a strange odor. The next thing that comes to your mind is that you are in danger. So you get out of your table and leave the room. You escaped danger because a fire was nearby. You helped put out the fire.

The odor of smoke was perceived by your sense of smell. But the danger was perceived by your sixth sense. Another person who does not believe in the sixth sense may not get this message of danger and so she continues working on the table until the fire engulfs her.

That is why it pays to be attentive to your five senses. This is the first step if you want to open your sixth sense and use it.

The second step is to realize that not everything can be known by your five senses. For example, you cannot see microbes with your bare eyes. You need a microscope for this. You cannot see some stars with your bare eyes. You need a telescope. In other words your five senses need instruments to be more useful.

So also your sixth sense needs some instruments to be useful. These instruments are periods of rest and quiet. If you are always in a hurry you will not be able to listen to the silent prodding of your sixth sense.

The third step is to realize that you are surrounded and immersed in a world of unseen reality. Some call this subtle dimension or subtle energy. Others call it spirit. Some spell spirit with a capital S. Whatever you call it you just have to take this as one of the givens in life. Just as we are surrounded by air on the face of this planet earth, so our being (body, soul, and spirit) is surrounded by an unseen reality.

This unseen reality knows who we are, where we are going, the dangers we may encounter, the defeats we shall go through in life and the successes we will attain.

The reason why we have to acknowledge the reality of this unseen reality is because it is this unseen reality which acts on our sixth sense, telling us what to do, warning us of dangers, informing us of opportunities.

The fourth step is just to follow your sixth sense. Some call this the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This sixth sense acts like the daemon of Socrates who forbade him to do some things. The more you follow your sixth sense the more it will make itself useful to you.

Use Your Sixth Sense

So now I can explain how I was able to get the questions that my teachers hid in their rooms. The unseen reality who surrounds all of us knew those questions even ahead of the teachers who formed them in their mind. Since I had access to this unseen reality this unseen reality gave those questions to my sixth sense and my sixth sense brought them to my mind. My mind studied those questions and that was how I got those high grades. People do not believe me when I tell them I got those high grades by a trick. It was indeed a trick, using the sixth sense.

You also have a sixth sense. Open it and use it. You will be warned of dangers ahead, informed of business opportunities waiting for you and your life will be more enriched with the use of this sixth sense.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Be Spiritually Healthy Always

2011-02-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

You may think that spirits do not get sick. They do. It is not only our bodies and minds that get sick. Our spirits also get sick.

We have hospitals for our sick bodies and mental health facilities for our sick minds, but we do not see hospitals or clinics for our sick spirits.

Where Do Sick Spirits Go for a Cure?

Some may immediately say, We have churches for our sick spirits. Maybe churches do care for our spirits. Do we mean to say that those who enter churches and are ministered to by these are spiritually sick, like those who enter hospitals and are cared for by our hospitals are physically sick?

If that is the case then how pitiful are those persons who frequent the churches. They are the ones who are spiritually sick.

Then someone may retort: Actually all are spiritually sick, even those who do not frequent the churches. But it is only these who go to the churches who are aware that they are sick. The ones who do not go near the churches are not aware that they too are spiritually sick.

So, if all of us, church goers and non-church goers are spiritually sick, how do we get healthy? How do we get spiritually healthy?

Three Major Diseases of the Spirit

First of all let us understand the three major diseases of the spirit. These are doubt or disbelief, despair, and fear. If churches are institutions of spiritual health they are supposed to cure us of these deadly spiritual diseases: doubt or disbelief, despair, and fear.

How do we stay healthy so that these diseases do not invade our spirits? The answer is rather simple but it needs some kind of lengthy explanation.

How To Be Spiritually Healthy

The answer is that we stay spiritually healthy by connecting ourselves constantly or always with the ultimate source of all kinds of health, physical, mental or spiritual. This ultimate source who is the Spirit of all health is always healthy. In him there is no sickness and he is the one who communicates health to all of us.

If has been established already by the science of medicine that what keeps the body healthy is the body itself. The Spirit has created our body in such a way that it produces all the substances necessary to preserve our health. The medicines that we take are only helps to our body so that it can properly produce these substances. Our body has the most reliable immune system. When this immune system breaks down as in AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome then the body's health also breaks down.

So also, as the Spirit communicates health to our body by equipping it with an immune system, he communicates health to our spirit by supplying it with the medicine for the deadly spiritual diseases of doubt or disbelief, despair, and fear. If we are always in communication with this Spirit he will give us the medicines for these diseases.

For doubt or disbelief the Spirit gives us the medicine of faith or belief. Some think that you can produce this medicine by self-affirmation. It is not done so. It is the Spirit himself who gives us faith or belief or trust in him.

For despair, the Spirit gives us hope. He urges us to expect better times, times of delivery from all our problems.

And for fear, the Spirit gives us love. He convinces us that to love is better than not to have loved at all, that at the end all love is repaid.

So, how do we keep ourselves spiritually healthy? By keeping close to the Spirit who gives us the medicines of faith, hope and love against the deadly spiritual diseases of doubt, despair and fear.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

3 Ways to Analyze Your Personal Spirituality

2011-02-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

The word "analysis" comes from two Greek words, "ana" which means "throughout" and "lein" which means "to loosen". When we analyze something then we loosen or separate its parts and look at them thoroughly.

Three Ways to Analyze Your Personal Spirituality

There are 3 ways to analyze your personal spirituality, because basically your personal spirituality has three parts. These parts are its origin, it progress and its end or culmination.

I shall now teach you the 3 ways to analyze your spirituality. I will teach you how to analyze its origin, whether you have already begun the journey of your spirituality or not yet. Then I will teach you how to analyze its progress, whether you are progressing well in your spirituality or not. Thirdly I will teach you how to ascertain whether you have already attained its end or culmination or are near it.

Analyze the Starting Point of Your Spirituality

If you want to know whether you have already begun your spiritual journey the question you need to ask is: Did a moment come in my life when I was thoroughly dissatisfied with it to the point that I wanted to abandon my life then and to live a completely new life?

If you have not yet experienced such a moment in your life you have not yet begun your spiritual journey. To all appearances you may be a good person but if you have not undergone an experience of total dissatisfaction with your life, you have not yet begun the first step in the quest for genuine spirituality. I want to give 2 examples of such an experience of total dissatisfaction with life. Of course I do not mean that you also experience these examples in the same way. What I want to emphasize is that a similar situation has occurred in your life.

The first example is that of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. He lived in the 5th century before Christ in India. He was the son of King Suddhodana who wanted him to be his successor as king. But when Siddhartha was 29 years old, he left his palace to see his subjects. There among his subjects he saw an old man, a sick man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic. The sights of these suffering human beings depressed him, and he got dissatisfied with his life, so totally dissatisfied that he quit his palace and lived the life of a beggar. That was Siddhartha's beginning of his spiritual journey.

The second example I give you is that of Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, the founder of the Franciscans. He lived in the 12th going to the 13th century. He was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, Italy, and he lived a carefree life of a wealthy man. But soon he was completely dissatisfied with his life renouncing even his father and his inheritance, even getting rid of the clothing his father had given him. He stood naked.

These are extreme cases of dissatisfaction with the present life. But such dissatisfaction must occur before you can begin your spiritual journey.

I cannot forget the words the preacher directed at me when this moment happened in my life. He told me, as though he addressed his words personally to me only, 'Burn the bridges to your past life in such a way that even if you want to you can no longer return to it.'

If you have experienced this dissatisfaction with your life then you have begun your spiritual journey. If not, you have to wait until your searching for a better life leads you to this experience.

Analyze the Progress of Your Spirituality

Now we go to the second analysis. Do you want to know whether you are progressing in your spiritual life? The way to do this is rather simple. Just ask yourself: Have I become more compassionate towards others, not just human beings, but even animals and plants and minerals.

We also notice that in the lives of the two persons we cited above they grew in compassion towards creation as they progressed in their spiritual life. The reason for this is because progressing in spiritual life is a progress towards the Creator and as we come nearer to him we begin to love more and more his creation.

Growth in learning or in wealth is no guaranteed sign of spiritual progress. The only authentic sign of spiritual progress is compassion.

So, you ask yourself: Have I become more compassionate towards others, my family, my friends, the animals I meet, the plants I pass by? If you can answer this affirmatively, you are sure of progressing well in the spiritual life.

Analyze Whether You Have Attained Your Goal in Spirituality

Now we go to the third way to analyze your personal spirituality. This is about its end or culmination. How do you know whether you have attained perfect spirituality or have reached the end of your spiritual journey?

Some people are of the opinion that there is no end to our spiritual journey as long as we are still living on this earth. My opinion is different. I say that there is an end to our spiritual journey even while we are still on this earth. This means that we have already attained complete growth. We are already stable. We can no longer be swayed by this or that opinion. And we keep on producing spiritual fruits.

The nature of any journey is that it has a beginning and an end. If the spiritual journey is all beginning and going and there is no end to it, then it is not really a journey; it is more of a treadmill. But spirituality is not a treadmill.

So, how do you know whether you have reached the end or are near the end of your spiritual journey, having attained the purpose of spirituality in life? It is simply done by asking whether you are afraid of death or not. If you are still afraid of death, that means you have some unfinished business to do here on earth. But if like Socrates the philosopher or Jose Rizal the Philippine national hero, you are no longer afraid of death it means you are ready to go into the world of pure spirits.

Now that you have analyzed your personal spirituality according to its origin, progress and its end, you can truly decide in what stage you are in your spirituality, whether you have already started this spiritual journey or not yet, how well you are progressing, and whether you have already attained the end of this journey or are near it.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Recognize Your Spiritual Calling

2011-01-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

What are you good at? There is at least one thing you are good at which others cannot do as best as you do. It may be a very minor thing like reaching your ears with your fingers from behind your back or a major accomplishment like turning back plastics into gasoline. Whatever it is, it is something unique, as unique as your fingerprint.

That unique ability you have can be the basis of your calling in life. You are called to be a gymnast or a technology expert. Or you may be called to be a great teacher or an expert programmer.

Some people are called to be great civil servants. Others are called to be loyal, trusted and productive followers.

Each of Us Has a Spiritual Calling

In the spiritual life each of us has also a calling. Some are called to be great spiritual leaders, like Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada. Others are called to be martyrs of purity, like Maria Gorettti. Others are called to be reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. Others are called to be proponents of New Age ideas. Others are called to be church organists.

The question now is: How do you recognize your spiritual calling?

Ask the Spirit About Your Spiritual Calling

The answer is simple and yet it calls for a clear, extended explanation.

The simple answer is for you to contact the Spirit and to ask him about your spiritual calling. Basically, that is the answer. But it produces more questions on your part: How do I contact this Spirit. How do I know it is the good Spirit I am in contact with? The bad spirit may answer ahead of the good Spirit. How does the Spirit talk to me and how can I listen to his answer? Will he answer me with words, just like the words I use to talk to him?

You now have more questions whose answers may trigger more questions and it may take some time before you get back to your original question: How do I recognize my spiritual calling?

Fortunately in this area of our life we are not like blind persons in darkness looking for objects to guide our every step. We have our senses, our mind and our spirit to recognize our spiritual calling. And again we are fortunate because recognizing our spiritual calling is analogous to recognizing our sociological calling, our task in society. We can apply the principles in the latter to the former.

Schools nowadays give aptitude tests to students to determine their abilities and interests. In the same way you can ask yourself what are your spiritual abilities and interests. You can begin by looking at the lists of ministries in the Bible. These lists are found in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. Then you can go beyond these lists. You may be interested in standing by sick people, comforting them. Or you may be interested in encouraging those in prisons to change their lives for the better. Whatever it is that interests you and you have the ability to develop that interest, that may be the way where you can find your spiritual calling.

Yes, you ask the Spirit. But in a sense the Spirit has already answered you even before you ask. He has already equipped you with abilities and interests in the spiritual areas of your life. It is for you to recognize these abilities and interests and formulate what your calling is.

The answer given you may change and grow with the years. Bill Bright felt at one time in his life that he was called to be a student leader in evangelism. This calling grew into being the founder and first president of Campus Crusade for Christ. A calling to serve in the prison ministry may expand to serve the victims of domestic violence.

Steps in Recognizing Your Spiritual Calling

The first step is to ask the Spirit about your spiritual calling.

The second step is to examine your abilities and interests in the spiritual areas of your life and single out those which you have.

The third step is to follow your calling as you perceive it.

The fourth step is to adjust, reformulate your calling as required by the needs around you.

These are the steps you can do to recognize your spiritual calling. And you will know whether that is really your spiritual calling because as you respond to this call, you experience an inner peace which you cannot have in any other calling.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

3 Ways to Heighten Your Spirituality and Grow in Faith

2011-01-07T02:14:00.000-08:00

Some things are so obvious that we do not notice them, we do not appreciate their presence. As the old saying goes, Familiarity breeds contempt.

The sun which gives us light and heat, the air we freely breathe, the water we drink—these and many more do not move most of us to say “Thank you” to the One who is their ultimate source. We take them for granted.

In the same way in matters that pertain to our spiritual growth we do not see the obvious. We invent ways and means which only complicate our path to spiritual maturity and fruitfulness.

Attempts to Heighten One’s Spirituality

There was a time in Church history, and this spanned many centuries, not just years, when monks and nuns flagellated themselves, whipped their backs with knotted cords, purportedly to perform penance for sins and imperfections, and to control their bodily desires. That was one of their ways to heighten their spirituality and grow in faith.

Again there were centuries when people in hordes undertook pilgrimages, also to heighten their spirituality and grow in faith. Today there are still pockets of these pilgrimages.

Whipping our backs and going on pilgrimages are complicated ways to heighten our spirituality and grow in faith.

Most of those who travel on the road of spirituality miss the obvious. They tend to complicate matters.

Go to the Sources of Your Spirituality

The first way is obviously to go to the sources of one’s spirituality and drink, as it were, from these sources. This means that you read your Sacred Scriptures. If you are a Christian, read your Bible. If you are a Muslim, read your Qur’an. If you are a Hindu, read your Bhagavad Gita. If you are a Buddhist, read your Tripitaka. Whatever is your religion or faith, read its sacred writings.

This is very basic and yet we need to be constantly reminded of this. The reason is because we can be easily misled to read other than these sources, and forget these sources altogether.

Every reform and revival movement in the Christian Church has always pointed the way back to the Bible. And every Christian group that sprouts has always claimed the Bible as its ultimate authority. A similar phenomenon has also happened among the other great religions of the world. They always go back to their sacred written sources.

The first way, therefore, to heighten your spirituality and grow in faith is to keep on reading the written sources of your spirituality: the Bible, or the Qur’an, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tripitaka, or other such sources. Reading these once in a while will not benefit you. You need to do this daily, just as you feed your body daily. You may read some pages, some paragraphs, some sentences. It does not matter, as long as you read a portion of such sacred writings.

This is so obvious as the first requirement for a heightened spirituality that very many people miss it. They think that it is so basic that after some kind of enlightenment they can proceed to more sophisticated ways of heightening their spirituality, like reading the latest book on spirituality, or performing some newly found unique bodily postures, mental exercises, ritualistic offerings, etc.

The truth is that the Spirit will always lead the sincere seeker to his writings, the sources of our spiritual life, the Word of God.

Let the Sources Transform You

The second way to heighten your spirituality is also obvious. It is to allow what you read in the sources of your spirituality to sink deeper into your life and transform you.

Reading the Bible or other sacred books will not benefit you if you read it just for the sake of reading it, to get information or even insights for a better life. You need to be quiet and still and let what you read penetrate your mind and heart. Just as what you eat needs to be digested to be of some benefit to your body, so also you need to digest, as it were, the Word of God to get the full benefit of it.

To do this you need a quiet place where you can be alone with your God. It does not matter whether it is in a desert far away from civilization or on top of a condominium in the midst of a bustling city, in a bedroom or a garden beside your house, in a Christian chapel or a Muslim prayer room in a mall. What is important is that you are alone and in a quiet place. If you own your office time you can hang a notice on the door knob of your office, with a sign that you cannot be disturbed because you have a very special visitor.

The purpose of going into such a quiet solitary place is for the Word of God, what you read in the sacred books, to sink into your life and transform you into this Word of God. Just as physical food is transformed into you, the reverse process takes place in the spiritual life. As the Word of God enters your life, it transforms you into itself, so that you become a word of God for others.

You start by thanking your God for the opportunity to be with him alone. Then you think about you have read in the sources of your faith. Then when you can no longer think about you read, you just stay there no longer thinking about anything. In this way what you read will penetrate more and more your heart.

How long do you do this? Twenty minutes per day would be the minimum to achieve some immediate palpable effect. But you can extend it to one or two or more hours if you have time.

The Third and Final Step

And the third way is perhaps the most obvious of all the ways although most people seem not to like it. Adam and Eve, or whoever were the first human beings, did not like it. Since their time, their descendants have not liked it, this third way. They continue to disregard it. But unless we go through this third way, our reading the Scriptures and pondering over their words in a solitary place are just a waste of time.

All the evils we see and experience in our world are the result of disregarding this third way.

This third way is expressed very simply in a four-letter word: obey. Ralph Waldo Emerson hit it right when he wrote: “The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey.”

You simply obey what the Spirit tells you to do. As you commune with him in silence and alone, he reveals to you his secrets, primarily more and more of himself and secondarily more and more of what he wants you to do. You simply obey.

That is all there is, to heighten your spirituality and grow in faith. 1) Read the sacred scriptures of your faith. 2) Let the words you read sink into your consciousness and subconsciousness in a quiet, solitary place. 3) Obey what the Spirit tells you to do.

Do these and in a very short time you will rise above the material elements of this earth and enter more and more into the regions of the spiritual realm.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

3 Ways to Know You've Had a Spiritual Awakening

2011-01-06T23:26:00.000-08:00

Remember Rip Van Winkle? Those of us in the American English speaking part of the world who passed our high school years in the 1950s to 1970s do remember him. He was the man who slept for 20 years in a hollow in New York. We knew him in our English Literature class.

For the younger generation who know nothing about Rip Van Winkle, here is a very brief summary. He was the principal character in Washington Irving’s story “Rip Van Winkle.” He was a Dutch American who did not want to work for a fee. He just wanted to play. One day he was lost in the mountains of New York as it was then before the American Revolution and got into the company of the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew. He drank their drink and fell asleep. He woke up only after 20 years, with a long beard and an aged man. He goes back to his village only to discover it was no longer the same as he left it. America was now independent from Great Britain. After some searching he discovered his family.

The reason why I started with the story of Rip Van Winkle is because he illustrates the person who sleeps for many years, who is awakened only after sleeping those many years, that is, in his body, the physical life.

In the spiritual life, like Rip Van Winkle most people are asleep and unless somebody wakes them up they will continue on sleeping spiritually, perhaps for the rest of their life. Some of them will wake up only in eternity.

Here are 3 ways to know you’ve had a spiritual awakening. If you have not gone through these 3 ways, this means that you are still asleep, that is, spiritually, like Rip Van Winkle physically, and it’s time for you to wake up.

Difference Between Spiritual and Physical Awakening

And that is the difference between spiritual awakening and physical awakening. You cannot know that you are physically awake if you are asleep. You cannot know that you are awake while you are still sleeping. But you can know that you have not yet awakened spiritually. How? By reflecting on your life, whether any of these ways are present in your life. If they are not yet present, then it means that you have not yet awakened spiritually. Knowing this you can now desire to awaken spiritually. And desiring to awaken spiritually is the step before actually awakening spiritually.

Fortunately, the ways to know we’ve had a spiritual awakening are similar to the ways to know we’ve had a physical awakening.

Awareness of Invisible Realities Around You

The first way to know that you are physically awake is by being aware of your surrounding, at first indistinctly, then little by little, more distinctly.

Even before you open your eyes you can know that you are already awake, that you are still in bed, that it is late in the night or early in the morning, etc.

Even so in spiritual awakening you are aware of the spiritual or invisible realities around you. You are aware that you are in a world of spiritual as well as physical realities. Again, as in physical awakening, this awareness is at first indistinct, but as time goes on and as you proceed in our spiritual journey this awareness becomes clearer and clearer.

This awareness of spiritual realities around you may result as a consequence of a dissatisfaction with your present job, of a failure in business, of a loss of a loved one, of a joyful encounter with a beloved. Whatever it is that triggers this awareness, you are made aware that not only physical, visible things surround you but also spiritual, non-visible things, like love or fear, inner peace or turmoil, joy or confusion.

Have you had this experience? If you have, then you have begun to awaken spiritually.

In physical awakening, after being aware of your surrounding the natural thing to do is to open your eyes and you see things around: the fading darkness or the onrush of sunlight, the furniture around the room, the light switch, the door, etc.

Awareness of Spiritual Forces in Struggle

So also in spiritual awakening you open your spiritual eyes and perceive the spiritual realities around you: the strivings of human beings to improve their lives and seek ultimate happiness, the crimes committed in the search for some kind of satisfaction, the exultation and joys of those who succeed in their endeavors, the struggle between good and evil occurring before your very eyes.

Do you perceive these spiritual realities around you? Beneath the stories of sordid crimes and wars, of natural and man-made calamities, do you see the mighty spiritual forces claiming for your attention? Do you see the ever increasing hordes of human beings who are digging deeper into poverty and homelessness? Do you see the few elite masters of this planet earth who continue to acquire resources beyond their consumption and just waste them away? And do you see these events as part of a spiritual battle between the invisible good and evil forces of the universe, beyond psychological, sociological, economic and political factors? Do you see the forces behind our world leaders which push them to dominate peoples and exploit them? If you do, you’ve had a spiritual awakening.

Action

Thirdly, in physical awakening after you are aware of your surrounding and after you open your eyes, you act. You get out of bed, go to the wash room, etc., preparing yourself for the work of the day.

So also in spiritual awakening, after you are aware of your spiritual surrounding and after you see what is happening spiritually around you and all over the world, you act. You prepare for the spiritual work ahead of you. You do not sink into hopeless resignation, thinking you can do nothing because of the enormity of the spiritual forces around you. You act because you are convinced that the Spirit in you is mightier than the thousands of problems around you.

You act but you do not do so rashly. You do not go into battle unprepared. So also in spiritual warfare you put on the shield and weapons of a spiritual nature, completely prepared to vanquish the enemies.

Are you struggling with spirit power to make this world a better place for you to live in, even just in your corner of the world? If you say, Yes, then you are acting and you are spiritually awake.

The three ways to know whether you’ve had a spiritual awakening is by 1) being aware of the spiritual realities around you; 2) opening your spiritual eyes to the events of spiritual forces around you; 3) acting spiritually in your corner of the world to make it a better place to live in. If this has happened to you, you know that you are spiritually awake and you can now help others to wake up spiritually.

There are millions of spiritual Rip Van Winkles around you who have been spiritually sleeping for years, for decades even. It is your task as an awakened spiritual person to help them wake up spiritually.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

What's Your Spiritual Type?

2010-12-10T04:11:00.000-08:00

In our biodata or resume we usually include religion as an item of information about ourselves. And in many government forms, as in that for the census, religion is also put as an item.

We usually put in this item of information the religion we are affiliated with. Some put Roman Catholic, others put Protestant, still others just put Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist or other terms like agnostic or atheist or none.

But today where more and more no longer enter the church or practice their religion or who prefer to be called “the unchurched”, it seems that it will become useless to ask their religion because it does not describe them as to their religious beliefs.

Religion or Spiritual Type?

A better term to put in this item might be “spiritual type”. But since this term is rather new to most people, it will take some time before this item will be put in our biodata or on government forms, if it will be put at all.

The term “religion” refers to what religious group a person belongs to. But the term “spiritual type” refers to his or her spiritual orientation.

Quizzes on Spiritual Types

There are quizzes on spiritual types. Some are serious. Others are just for entertainment. I took one for entertainment. After completing the test I was rated as confident believer. There are eight categories in the results of this quiz, from hardcore skeptic to candidate for clergy.

Another quiz has these categories in the results: sage, prophet, lover, mystic.

How about you? What is your spiritual type?

There are many ways of classifying spiritual types. Here are some of them and you may rate yourself accordingly.

Western Oriented or Eastern Oriented or Both

Your spiritual type is either western oriented or eastern oriented or a combination of both. You are western oriented if you subscribe to the writings in the Western part of the world, like the Christian Bible or the Muslim Qur’an. You are eastern oriented if you prefer to get ideas from the writings in the Eastern part of the world, like the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus or the Tripitaka of the Buddhists. It is possible that you combine both types, believing in all these sacred writings. After all it is not impossible to be a Christian and yet believe also in reincarnation or practice yoga. Some Christians think that this is impossible to combine, Christianity and belief in reincarnation. But Jesus himself said that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah the prophet.

Theistic or Atheistic or Agnostic

Your spiritual type may be theistic or atheistic or agnostic. It is theistic if you believe in God, atheistic if you do not believe in God, or agnostic if you do not care about this belief or profess that you cannot know anything about God.

Beginner or Proficient or Perfect

In the classical treatment of western spirituality there were basically three spiritual types which were really stages in prayer. These were the beginners, the proficient, and the perfect. The beginners were those who have decided to renounce the world and made a resolve to practice the discipline of prayer. The proficient was one who was already practicing the discipline of prayer and is already progressing in this exercise. The perfect was the one who attained already the contemplative level in prayer, where he or she no longer prays with words or ideas but only with a loving desire focused on God. I want to add here a fourth level, the non-beginners, those who have not yet resolve anything as regards their spiritual life.

A More Useful Classification of Spiritual Types

Perhaps a more useful classification of spiritual types would be: a) The non-conscious seeker of the Spirit; b) The purposeful seeker of the Spirit; c) The finder of the Spirit; d) The sharer of the Spirit.

a. The non-conscious seeker of the Spirit is one who has no idea yet of the spiritual life or spirituality. The majority of people would fall under this category.

b. The purposeful seeker is one who has already begun his or her search for the things of the spirit in a conscious manner. He or she knows that he or she is in pursuit of the things of the spirit and wants to continue.

c. The finder of the Spirit is one who has already found the connection with the Spirit and has a constant communication with him. The spiritual life is not a continuous search for what we cannot find. It has to end in a “eureka”.

d. The sharer of the Spirit is one who leads others to the Spirit. We have here the spiritual teachers who guide others safely to the things of the spirit.

My question is: What is your spiritual type? If you are reading this most probably you are a seeker. Or you may be a finder already. Think about your spiritual type and if you are not yet a sharer of the Spirit, learn more about him. He will guide you to share him with others.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

What Are the Spiritual Qualities That Make Up Our True Identities?

2010-12-10T01:33:00.000-08:00

It is strange that when a person is looking for something that will bring him or her true and lasting happiness, the question that will always bother him or her is: “Who am I?” It is a question of his or her identity. He or she wants to know who he or she really is. It is because his or her happiness ultimately depends on the knowledge of his or her true identity. If a person knows who he or she really is, he or she would be satisfied and would find true and lasting happiness.

We Have Different Identities

But this leads us to a fundamental truth of our identities. Each of us is different from one another. If the question were “What am I?” we could answer it in the same way: “I am a human being with flesh and blood and a bundle of needs and desires.”

But the question is not “What am I?” but “Who am I?” And each one of us has to answer differently just as each of us has a different name with a distinct thumb mark.

In other words we have different identities.

Imitation or Cultivation of Our Unique Identity

It is a waste of time imitating the identities of other people. But when we were children we tended to do this. We imitated our father, our mother, our teacher, our mayor in town, our village chief, or anyone we admired.

But now as we grow older we have a life of our own and we have our own identity. Or rather we form our own identity.

Personal identity is not something that is given to us. Nor is it something that we discover as we stumble along life’s way. It is something that we form by ourselves with the help of other people. And this brings us to our most relevant question: What are the spiritual qualities that make up our true identities?

Implicit in this question is the principle that if we want to know who we are and if we are the ones who form our identities, then we have to cultivate certain qualities which make up our true identities. Let us look for those qualities. Cultivate them. In so doing we shall discover who we really are.

Portland psychiatrist Dr. Philip Shapiro, M.D. has a list of 100 spiritual qualities in alphabetical order. The list is of course not exhaustive. For example he does not have anything under the letter z. He ends with the letter w. The list I suggest here is different from his list. For one thing my list is much, very much shorter.

I suggest that the following are the spiritual qualities that make up our true identities. Cultivating them will lead us to form and consequently “discover” our true identities.

Passionate Love for the Truth

This is first, a passionate love for the truth. Because of this passionate love we search for the truth of our self, of our neighbors, of our world. This involves study, not the study that we experienced in schools which was mostly memorizing, but a search for the causes and effects of what is happening around us and in us.

Courage to Take Risks

Second is the courage to take risks in our life projects. We all want to do something important in our life, whether it is in our personal life, our family, our community or even country and the world. And we dare to do the un-attempted yet in order to blaze a new trail. We subscribe to the motto “Nothing dared, nothing done.”

Willingness to Admit Mistakes and Correct Ourselves

Third is the willingness to admit mistakes and correct ourselves. In our endeavors sometimes we succeed, at other times we fail. We commit mistakes. The mistakes if accepted will lead us to where there are no mistakes.

Willingness to Listen to the Spirit

The fourth quality I suggest is the willingness and ability (which will come about if there is first the willingness) to just be still, silent and listen to the Spirit who created this world and fills this world with himself. With the unerring guidance of this Spirit we will truly form our identities.

Perseverance

And the fifth is perseverance. Nothing happens to the man who does not persevere. Many have been an inch away from the fortune they were seeking if only they persevered. We go on cultivating these spiritual qualities in our lives and sooner than later we shall form, find, discover and enjoy our true identities.

Passionate love for the truth, courage to take risks, willingness to admit mistakes and correct them, willingness and ability to be still, silent and listen to the Spirit, and perseverance: these are the spiritual qualities that make up our true identities. Cultivating them will help us to form our true identities and consequently lead us to true and lasting happiness.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Is Your Spirituality an Ultimate Reality?

2010-12-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

Everywhere people seem to search for that which is ultimate: ultimate gadget, ultimate happiness, ultimate enjoyment. The other day I saw an advertisement for the ultimate straightened hair. There is an advertisement for the ultimate guitar. Sooner or later everything has to come to an ultimate end.

And the search goes on for the ultimate reality. That is why the book OUR ULTIMATE REALITY by Adrian Cooper is so popular. Since its release in 2005 it has attracted more and more readers.

The question I want to ask and answer is: Is your spirituality an ultimate reality?

It would seem that your spirituality is an ultimate reality because spirituality has to do with things of the spirit, the things which last, which have no end, the things which cannot be seen but which control our material universe and anything beyond it.

But on deeper reflection we know that your spirituality as well as mine cannot be an ultimate reality.

Many Spiritualities But Only One Spirit

Spirituality is only a stance, an attitude toward the things of the Spirit. As such, every one has a spirituality, even those who deny the existence of the spiritual.

Throughout the centuries there have been many spiritualities. In the Western tradition we have the spirituality of the desert fathers, the hermits and monks of Egypt in the third and fourth centuries. Then there was the Benedictine spirituality. This was followed by many more.

In the Eastern world we have in the main Hindu and Buddhists spiritualities. These in turn are subdivided into different spiritualities. We have the Brahmanic spirituality. We have the Hinayanic spirituality. We can even speak of a Confucian spirituality, how Confucius and his followers regarded the things of the spirit.

As the world has now become global and the demarcation between East and West is blurred more and more people are searching for a spirituality that they can benefit from, one that will not only give them enlightenment on spiritual matters but one that will fulfill their deepest yearnings.

There are signs of spiritual hunger all around us. Some have satisfied their spiritual hunger and are spiritually awakened. As more and more people are spiritually awakened, we will discover more and more kinds of spirituality. We have already the word “Cooperian” associated with spirituality, referring to the ideas of Adrian Cooper, the author of the book Our Ultimate Reality.

But not one of these spiritualities is ultimate in the sense that it is the one, last way (since ultimate means last) to the knowledge and enjoyment of the things of the spirit. They are all attempts to capture the ultimate reality of the spirit.

Only the Spirit is the ultimate reality. Spiritualities, yours and mine and anybody else’s, are only ways to approach this ultimate reality. They are only gateways, as it were, to the ultimate reality.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Spiritual Guidance Is Life's Roadmap To Better Days

2010-11-18T02:44:00.000-08:00

Spiritual guidance is no longer a luxury for ordinary people like you and me. It is no longer just for monks and religious people who intend to live a more intense spiritual life. Spiritual guidance has become a necessity for people whose basic concern is just to live and earn a living. For spiritual hunger activates even those who just want to live simple lives. Perhaps this is because they are living at a time of spiritual awakening that has come upon us, even if they are not fully aware of this.

Spiritual Guidance Is For All

We realize now that this guidance of the Spirit, for that is basically what spiritual guidance is, is a necessity in our day to day ordinary normal life. We need this guidance to get our food, clothing, shelter, education, health, and more, even the better things in life.

Before our era almost all human beings thought that the basic things in life like food, clothing and shelter, can be ours by our own effort, by working for them, and by acquiring them in one way or another. But now more and more people are becoming aware that these things, material as they are, have their source in the Spirit who brought everything into existence. This is the reason why those who teach people how to get rich always emphasize constant gratitude to the Spirit as the starting point of every acquisition of real and lasting wealth.

Contrast Between Those Who Have Guidance and Those Who Have None

We see so many people, countless in fact, who work from dawn to dusk, break their backs in never-ending toil, but have less in life than others who seem to just relax and play with their hobbies. Most of them do not even have the basic necessities in life, like enough and nutritious food.

On the other hand, we see a few who have more than enough of this world’s goods and yet do not exert as much as one fourth of the effort of those who break their health in working but have not enough. The difference then is not in the amount of work. Working much does not necessarily produce much.

The difference is in the pattern of their lives. Those who have sufficiency and more are guided by a Spirit higher than themselves who can enable them to produce more with less effort. Those who have not—even the basic sufficiency—rely on their own guidance and effort.

Look at the successful people, even in showbiz. When they are asked to comment about their wealth, they always refer to a higher power who gave them their luck. On the other hand, those who live in misery are also contented that such is what fate gave them. In other words, both of them acknowledge the source of their fortune or misery is from outside of themselves.
If such is the case, why don’t people get guidance from the Spirit on how to conduct their lives for the better? It is because they are not fully convinced that there is this guidance and that they can avail of this.

Spiritual Guidance Is Available For All

Hence people have to be reminded that there is such a spiritual guidance available, a guidance from the Spirit who can guide them into better days, into times of sufficiency, even of abundance, of less stress and of greater enjoyment of the fruits of their labor.

Indeed spiritual guidance is life’s roadmap to better days. Get it from him who created all and who loves you so much as to give you everything for your enjoyment.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How To Use Your Spiritual Gifts To Glorify God

2010-11-12T03:59:00.000-08:00

Spiritual gifts are what they are, they are gifts from the Spirit. Because they are gifts, freely given, they can be withdrawn by the giver, the Spirit. They are temporary, for use only while we are on this planet earth. If you want to use them for quite some time to benefit others and you, use them to glorify God. How do you do this, how do you use them to glorify God?

Ways to Use Your Gifts to Glorify God

First, do not charge others for the use of your gift. If you have the gift of healing, do not charge even 1 cent for being used to heal people. You can charge for the incidental expenses, like for the transportation to the place of your patient, but do not charge for the healing itself. Freely you have received, freely give also.

Secondly, never use them to harm other people. Use them only to benefit other people. An example may illustrate this. You have the gift of interpreting languages. But you may be called sometime to interpret a language for someone whom you do not like, maybe one who has avoided you for so long. Do not give a wrong interpretation because you do not like the person who would use that interpretation.

Thirdly, make yourself available to people who may need your gift. Do not leave your house when you know people are coming to your house to make use of your gift, whether it is healing or giving a beneficial advice to them.

Fourthly, develop your gift. If you have the gift of healing, study human anatomy. This will help you explain to your sick patients what is happening to their bodies. If you have the gift of speaking in a foreign language, study the grammar of that language. If you have the gift of generosity, build a business that can benefit others, so that they do not have to ask money from you. They can earn money by themselves. In this way you are multiplying the value of the gift given you.

Fifthly, if you find it inconvenient to use this gift, return it to the giver. There may come a time when because of danger or because of your profession you may be extremely inconvenienced if you exercise your gift. If this happens, there is no harm in returning the gift to the Spirit who gave it to you. Let me cite an actual example.

A person had the gift of healing. But he noticed that there were times when he would be called in the dead of night to heal somebody a few kilometers away. Going to the sick person would make him leave his family which might face dangers from robbers. He realized that this was no longer good for his family or for other people. He returned his gift of healing. Today he no longer exercises this gift.

These are some of the ways you can do to use your spiritual gifts to glorify God. As you get in touch with your spirituality, you will discover your spiritual gifts and you will help in the spiritual awakening happening all around us. You will be giving glory to God.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Spiritual Gifts - How To Determine Your Spiritual Gift

2010-11-12T02:05:00.000-08:00

You have a spiritual gift. I am sure that you have a spiritual gift if you are a human being. And if you are reading this article, then you are a human being and you have a spiritual gift. But if you do not know what it is, you are not going to benefit from it. In this article I will show you how you can determine or discover your spiritual gift.

It is one of the signs of spiritual awakening that people are searching for a way to find out what spiritual gifts they have received from the Spirit. The people’s spiritual hunger activates them to search for the gifts which the Spirit has given to them. If you are trying to discover or determine what is, or are, the gifts the Spirit has given you then you have come to the right place.

The Three Signs of What Your Gift or Gifts Are

There are three signs which show you what your spiritual gift or gifts are. These three signs are: 1) an activity which is easy or enjoyable for you to do; 2) an activity which you do well, it produces results; 3) it is of benefit to others and, consequently, to you.

Those are the three signs but those do not include how you actually discover the gift. I will discus this later. Let us first discuss the three signs above.

You Enjoy Doing It

The first sign that you have this gift is because you are doing an activity which is easy or enjoyable for you to do. It may be singing or dancing or healing or speaking in another language. The first two examples I just gave may be also talents. But talents are different from gifts. Strictly speaking, talents are inborn. Gifts are given when you are already of age or are mature enough to make use of the gift. But some so called talents may also be given as gifts. In other words they arrive late in your life, as in the example I give of singing and dancing.

You Do It Very Well

The second sign is that you do this activity well or are effective in this activity. You lay your hand on a sick person and that sick person gets well. You have the gift of healing. You sing and persons are moved to tears. You have the gift of singing. If you sing and people give you an applause, you may only have the talent of singing but not the gift.

It Benefits Others and You

And the third sign is that the activity helps or benefits other people and consequently it benefits you. You heal people and so you become helpful to others. You become a helpful person.

These three signs must appear together, not one at a time. They are present in every activity that is your gift.

How Do You Discover the Gift Given You?

Usually a gift is discovered during a crisis situation. You do not go around testing this activity or that activity to find out if you have this or that gift. You do not go around hospitals to lay your hands on sick people to find out if you have the gift of healing. If you do this, the hospital administrators may compel you to leave the hospital as a nuisance.

What usually happens is that you are faced with a crisis situation. For example, your neighbor is sick and the doctors cannot find something wrong with that sick person. And you called in just to visit. Before you leave the sick you say a prayer and as a gesture of help you lay your right hand on the head of that person. The person gets well, instantaneously or after a while. You do this again with other persons and the same effect happens. People are cured. You have the gift of healing.

I gave the example of the gift of healing because it is quite common and there are some who are of the opinion that each of us has the gift of healing. I also give this example because it is a gift which I myself have experienced.

But there are other gifts.

So, how do you determine the gift that has been given to you? Talk with the Spirit. Ask him what gift he has given you. Then go on helping other people. When you meet a crisis situation, you will discover the gift that has been given to you.

Another example. This guy pitied those who do not have a good, stable shelter. He built a housing project for a poor, depressed community. It got publicity. Soon other persons helped him with his project of giving shelter to people. He has the gift of providing shelter to homeless persons. In fact he has gone around the world providing shelter to people. You may know who this person is, because he is famous.

Discovering or determining your gift is like spiritual awakening. You wake up to the reality that you have a gift which can be most helpful to others.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Spiritual Gifts - What is Your Spiritual Gift?

2010-11-09T00:27:00.000-08:00

You have received a precious gift. Yes, you have received a precious gift, whether you know it or not, whether you agree with me or not. It is a gift from the Spirit and the general name of this gift is that it is a spiritual gift, because it comes from that Spirit.

A Gift Can Go Unnoticed and Unused All Your Life

If you know this gift you are able to use it for your benefit and that of others around you. If you do not know what this gift is, it will lie there, unopened, unlooked, unused and you will go through life all the poorer because of your failure to make use of this wonderful gift.

It is like an inheritance. A parcel of land was awarded to an heir as an inheritance. But if she does not know about this deed of inheritance, she will go through life without getting the benefits of this inheritance.

Ephesians 4:8 says that gifts were given to human beings, not just to members of the Church. This means that whether you are a Christian or non-Christian, a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist or agnostic, or whatever else, if you are a human being, a gift was given to you by this Spirit. It may be one gift or may be more than one gift. But at least there is a gift that was given to you.

So, what is your spiritual gift? Let us have a rundown of some of these gifts.

A Listing of Some of These Gifts

Do you have the gift of prophecy? This does not necessarily mean that you can foretell things in the future, but that you are able to speak forth for God.

Do you have the gift of ministry or serving others? Some people just have the knack of helping others voluntarily without thinking of any compensation. Are you one of these?

Do you have the gift of teaching, showing others clearly and forcefully what you want to say? Some who took up teaching as a profession have this gift, but the majority seem not to have it. They can only repeat what the textbooks and other teachers said before them.

Or do you have the gift of exhortation, giving energy to those who seem to be lacking the drive to do a certain thing?

Do you have the gift of giving? Many philanthropists have this gift. But you need not be a well-known philanthropist to have this gift. You can give in your own little way.

Do you have the gift of ruling or managing things. Some have the knack of delegating work to others. They have this gift of ruling or managing.

Do you have the gift of showing mercy? There are people who are naturally compassionate. They cannot even kill a fly. They have mercy even unto the least of animals.

Do you have the gift of wisdom, saying the right word at exactly the needed time?

Or do you have the gift of knowledge, able to understand some of the hidden things around us like the mysterious laws of nature?

Or do you have the gift of faith so as to perform miracles?

Or do you have the gift of healing so as to cure diseases of body and mind?

Maybe you have the gift of discerning of spirits so as to know what spirit is working in the lives of people, whether the spirit is good or bad?

Or do you have the gift of speaking in a tongue foreign to you or of understanding a foreign language? Some people seem to learn a language very quickly. They have this gift.

Or you may have other gifts not mentioned here. There are plenty of other gifts. Like the gift of arranging things, the gift of cleaning things, the gift of humor, the gift of acting, the gift of singing, etc. Language itself, knowing how to speak in verbal or sign language, is already a gift given to you.

What Is Your Spiritual Gift?

It is time for you to reflect upon your life and recognize what gift or gifts have been given to you. It is time for you to have a spiritual awakening so that you can recognize the gift given you and take benefit from this gift. Your spiritual hunger activates genuine spirituality within you. As you are getting in touch with your spirit you will know the gifts given to you.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Great Advice Regarding Spirituality

2010-11-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

At a time when spiritual hunger activates people to search for something that is permanent we see the signs of spiritual awakening. This is spirituality at its best. People are indeed spiritually awakening, are waking up spiritually, are conscious of the whole new world of the spirit. Some of you are getting in touch with your spirituality, are getting in touch with your spirit. And you are looking for a great advice regarding spirituality. I hope to give you this advice in this article.

Everyone And Everything Is Getting Old

You and I are getting old. In a couple of years we will be so old that our body systems will fail to function and we have to leave our bodies to this planet earth.

In the face of this reality we ask, Is there something that remains permanent, that does not grow old? If we only look at the world with our physical eyes we will have to answer that there is none. There is nothing we see that remains permanent and does not grow old.

But then we also realize that we cannot see everything with our physical eyes. There are things beyond the vision of our physical eyes. The love that exists between two lovers cannot be seen by the eyes. The depth of sorrow a person feels at the loss of a beloved cannot be seen by our eyes. The joy a father feels at the birth of a son cannot be seen by the eyes.

Indeed there are many things that cannot be seen by our physical eyes and it is among these things that we can find something that endures, something that is permanent and does not grow old.

Things That Do Not Grow Old

We begin with mathematical concepts which we learned during our high school days. In our class in geometry we learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This was true in the time of Euclid who wrote this proposition 300 years before Christ. It is still true today, more than 2,000 years from the time of Euclid, and will be true centuries from now, although according to the theory of gravitation there cannot be an actual straight line because the gravitational force will always bend that line.

That concept or idea of a straight line is something that is permanent and does not grow old.

The same holds true with the rules of logic which we learned in college. Those rules remain true, permanent and do not grow old.

We immediately notice that these things which are permanent and do not grow old are ideas. They are not objects our senses can see, but ideas only our mind can understand.

But then we ask: Where do these ideas come from? If such ideas are permanent and do not grow old, their origin or source logically also does not grow old, is permanent.

The Source of Things That Do Not Grow Old

And this is where my great advice regarding spirituality comes in. My advice to you is: Search for the source of these ideas that do not grow old, that are permanent. If you find this source you will also realize that there is something in you yourself that does not grow old, but is ever young, ever permanent.

This something in you that is ever young, ever permanent is not your body because you know it is getting old every day and every year. It is not your mind, because you know that your mind is changeable. What you love today you may hate tomorrow.

If the source of ideas that do not grow old, that are ever young, that are always permanent is not your body or your mind, it must be something else. There can only be one answer. It is the spirit.

You Can Always Be Young

The spirit never grows old, is always young, always permanent. And when you live your life according to this spirit there is a part of you that is forever young, forever permanent.

Search for this spirit, live with him, talk to him, get ideas from him. He holds an infinite number of ideas and will always go on creating worlds around you. By living in the spirit you will always stay young, ever young with the passing of time even unto eternity.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

A Few Spiritual Messages We Can Need

2010-10-22T02:05:00.000-07:00

Do you want to enjoy your life to the full? Do you want to be happy beyond all your expectations?

There are some messages you need to learn in order to be happy beyond your wildest dreams. They are only a few, but they are spiritual messages. These messages have taken on a more relevant turn because of the signs of a spiritual awakening among us. More and more people have spiritually awakened. They want more from life than just the best of material things, like fine houses and the latest cars. They want more substantial things and they turn to the things which cannot be seen, but which they hunger for, the things of the spirit.

Here are those few spiritual messages we can need during these times of spiritual awakening.

Message 1. Everything that there is has come into existence by an Intelligence superior to any and all intelligences. We just call this the Intelligence. We do not call him the most intelligent being, since labeling him “most” can mean that he can be compared with other intelligences and he belongs to the superlative degree. There is just no way of comparing him with others. We do not even call him the most superior or supreme intelligence. These terms denote comparison and there is just no way of comparing him with others. He is totally unique, the Intelligence, from whom all came into being.

Just look at the arrangement of things around you and you see beauty, a plan, a symmetry, an orderliness that cannot just happen by chance. If you still want more of the wonders of creation you can peer into the microscope to see how even tiny particles of matter hide such great beauty and symmetry. Or you can glance through the telescope at the colossal wonders of the sky beyond.

There is no need to prove the existence of this Intelligence. It is most obvious. We can only acknowledge its existence, not prove it. The philosophers spent centuries to prove his existence when there was no need to prove it. It is like proving to you that what you are reading right now came from me. There is no need to prove this. You simply acknowledge that I wrote this, what you are reading right now.

Message 2. This Intelligence who brought everything into being cares about you and the minutest details of your life. He has even numbered each strand of your hair, according to the Christian scripture. In other words, he is a most loving Intelligence. Again words fail to describe him. He is Love itself. There is no need and there is no way of comparing his love with others. He loves to the uttermost degree we cannot even think of.

What is the meaning of this? It means that he wants us to be the best, to have the best, to experience the best stay on this planet earth and beyond.

Message 3. The third message is a consequence of the second. This Intelligence wants you to enjoy life to the fullest. He does not want you to be sad or sorrowful. He does not want you to experience pain or privation.

Despite all the poverty, the suffering, the chaos we see in the world all around us, the truth is that this Intelligence does not want these things for us. He wants us to experience freedom from poverty, victory over suffering, order out of chaos.

Message 4. This Intelligence is not just most powerful, but is all powerful. He is able to do what he wants to do, except contradict himself. Because he is powerful he is willing and most able to free you from all the sufferings and privations and persecutions you may be undergoing through right now. All he needs is only for you to contact him, to listen to him and to obey.

We hear all kinds of accidents all around us. This airplane crashed. That bus went headlong after losing its brake, plunging to death all its passengers. A storm is raging and flood ensues, drowning thousands of inhabitants. An earthquake strikes, toppling buildings burying their occupants alive. All these are happening around us but this is not the will of this Intelligence. They do happen because we do not listen to him. Most people are ignorant of this Intelligence. They put up a god of their own who cannot deliver them from these dangers.

Message 5. This Intelligence guides you the best way so you can enjoy life to the fullest. You need only listen and obey.

He has a way of delivering you from all the dangers surrounding you, if you allow him to do so. You need only to be careful to listen to him and obey.

How many times I have experienced this myself. One time while riding a van I heard a great explosion. I saw that the front windshield of the van was shattered. I expected blood to be splashed all around. I was most surprised that I did not see even just one drop of blood. A big stone had crashed into the front of the van from a delivery truck. But no passenger was hurt. The stone hit the head rest of the front seat. The Intelligence had spared us. The incident gave a lesson to delivery truck owners to cover their cargo with canvass so that nothing flies out of them.

Message 6. Our destiny is to enjoy the company of this Intelligence who will reveal to us everything that he knows, even his very own self. We are naturally curious. We want to know this, we want to know that. A time will come when we will know all the mystery of this universe. We will then know how many planets in the universe are like our own, why this universe seems to be expanding like a mat being spread out. Not only will we know completely what is happening all around us, we will know this Intelligence as we would know our spouse. He will reveal his own life and very self to us. What more can we desire?

Message 7. All of us are interconnected with one another, with all the elements, plants and animals, all thoughts and all ideas, organically so that the life of this Intelligence flows through and in all of us. Only rejection of this Intelligence makes our life miserable. All the evils, dangers, sufferings we see in this world and will ever see or experience come from the rejection of this Intelligence and his guidance.

All the uneasiness and spiritual turmoil we see around us, people taking in drugs of all sorts, crimes of greater magnitude being committed everyday, terrorism just lurking around the corner are all warnings for all of us to wake up spiritually, to listen to what this Intelligence tells us and to follow him.

It does not matter to what religion we belong, this Intelligence works in all religions, among all kinds of people. He is no respecter of tribes or nations. He does not speak only to Christians or only to Muslims or only to Hindus. He speaks even to those who are very far yet from civilization of any kind, who still only gather fruits and dig out root crops for food.

Reading these messages may give you the impression that life is simple. Indeed it is. It is only human beings who have made it complicated. Learn more about this Intelligence, know more of him, feel his love and care for you for he is able to take care of you in all your needs. When you cross the other side of life you will see his smiling welcome. Then you will conclude it was worth your while to know him and live with him while you were on planet earth.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Getting Spiritually Clean - Where to Go For a Spiritual Cleansing

2010-10-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

There is a natural tendency for us to choose that which is clean and generally we prefer to be clean ourselves physically. We want to eat clean foods, to drink clean water and wear clean clothes.

When a person has spiritually awakened, there comes a time when he wants to be clean not only physically but also spiritually. He wants clean living. If he has engaged in taking illegal drugs, he now wants to get rid of this habit. If he has taken alcohol compulsively he now wants to stop this slavery to alcohol. He wants clean living. And he asks, How or where can he get spiritual cleansing?

The Meaning of Spiritually Clean

We have to know first the meaning of being spiritually clean. We know what it means to be physically clean. There is no dirt in our body, no foreign object or stain or particles in our body like dust or grease. We know also what it means to be mentally clean. We do not have a dirty mind, we are not thinking of something that is not supposed to be in our mind, like evil thoughts.

In the same way by spiritually clean we mean that there is nothing dirty or foreign to our spirit, something that is not supposed to be there. And the two things that are not supposed to be there, which make our spirit unclean, are hatred and fear. If a person has these or one of these, he has an unclean spirit.

Why do hatred and fear make our spirit unclean? Because they are foreign to the nature of the spirit. Watch those who we say or describe as full of the spirit. The two qualities which they exude more than all other qualities are those of love and boldness. These latter belong to the spirit as natural qualities, whereas their opposite, hatred and fear are most foreign to the spirit and make it unclean.

Where To Go For Spiritual Cleansing

So, where do you go for spiritual cleansing? Of course you go to the Spirit of purity, the one who is clean, who has no evil thought, who has no hatred and no fear. If you are near him and you are one with him you will not experience this dirtiness or uncleanness of the spirit. You associate with this Spirit and follow his directions on how you may be cleaned spiritually, because by yourself you cannot get rid of these two emotions that make your spirit dirty.

Why We Cannot Make Ourselves Spiritually Clean

There is a story in southern Philippines which illustrates to us how deep-seated hatred is in us.

The story relates that in some communities if you have offended a member of that community, the member or his relative will plant a bamboo. This bamboo will remind the community that you have offended its members and so they will take a revenge against you for this offense, no matter how distant in the future is the revenge.

And here is the reason why they plant a bamboo and not a tree. The tree grows old and it dies after so many years, even if takes hundreds of years. But the bamboo never dies of its own. It spreads its roots and multiplies its shoots and grows more and more. You cannot kill it by just felling it down, not even by burning it. After the burning young shoots will germinate and start all over again the growth of the bamboo.

The bamboo will remind the community of your offense forever and the community will take steps to take its revenge on you.

That is how deep seated hatred is in us. We may not plant a literal bamboo, but the hatred goes deeper than the roots of the bamboo, into our deepest consciousness, making our spirit unclean, destroying our life.

That is why we need the Spirit to uproot this hatred from our life. It is interesting that both Hinduism and Christianity portray the Spirit as a cleansing spirit. In Hinduism we have Shiva, the destroyer of the universe, of the impurities in our world. In Christianity the Spirit is represented as fire. Fire destroys and purifies metals.

The Spirit is the one who purifies us, who makes us clean. The purification is painful, because it is as if by fire, but the fruit of this is spiritual purity, we become loving and bold. If you are a Christian you can trust in the shed blood of Jesus as the agent that has cleaned your spirit of all dirt and impurities, making you bold and loving. But if you say that you are a Christian and that you trust in the blood of Jesus to clean your spirit, but you have not experienced being bold and loving that blood is still useless to you. You are not clean spiritually. It is all theory to you.

Again fear is most natural to us and we cannot get rid of it. When as children we heard the roar of the thunder we naturally got afraid. We are naturally afraid to die. As we grow we experience so many other fears, fear of height, fear of people, fear of darkness, etc., even fear of ourselves. We are not confident. We are unclean spiritually. Fear is not supposed to be in our spirit.

Again, where do we go for getting rid of fear? To the Spirit of boldness. It is told that the Apostles became bold and fearless when the Spirit descended upon them. As we associate more with this Spirit we become bold and fearless, that is, clean spiritually.

Sexual Activity Of Itself Does Not Make Your Spirit Unclean

This spiritual cleanness has no negative relation with sexual activities. There are some people who think that sexual activity makes the spirit unclean. When Watchman Nee got married, some of the Christians around him got offended because they did not expect that such a spiritual man should marry, engage in sexual activity. They did not realize that sex of itself does not make a person spiritually unclean. If sex is done in hatred and fear, then the spirit is made unclean, not by the sex but by the hatred and fear that accompany it. But if it is done in love and with confidence, it does not make the spirit unclean.

You Can Be Spiritually Clean Always

Now that you know what spiritual cleanliness is, how to get clean, where to go to be cleaned spiritually, it is for you to be always in communication with the Spirit of spiritual cleanliness if you want to be clean spiritually. He will clean you, meaning he will make you bold and loving. Only he has the power to do this. He is the only one who plants in you that uneasiness and spiritual hunger for spiritual cleanliness. That is why you go to him. He will wake you up spiritually and cleanse you. No amount of water washing can clean your spirit. At best water washing can only remind you of the spiritual washing, the spiritual cleansing.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

A Step-By-Step Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

2010-10-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

You are about to wake up spiritually. You come from a condition of spiritual darkness to that of spiritual light. There are signs of spiritual awakening in you. When you are spiritually awakened you look for light to enlighten you as you continue with your life. You need and want a step-by-step guide to spiritual enlightenment. Here is what I can offer you if you are one of these persons who are in the situation of spiritual awakening but may not know how to go about getting spiritual enlightenment.

Step 1. Contact the Spirit of Enlightenment. The very first step you are supposed to do is to contact the Spirit of enlightenment. If you want spiritual enlightenment you need him who can give you spiritual enlightenment, no other than the Spirit of enlightenment.

And it is not difficult to contact him because he is always available. It is not like contacting an important personality, like a nation’s president, who is too busy to attend to you. This Spirit is always available. It is you who may not be available. In fact he is always waiting for you to contact him.

How then do you contact him? This is very simple to do, but it takes discipline. Make yourself available to him by giving him a definite time and a definite place in your life. Choose a time during the day for him when you are least disturbed. If you cannot choose any time, then make that time. Some people have it best very early in the morning or late at night, but not very late. When I began this exercise the best time for me was from 6 to 6:30 in the evening. Thirty minutes of your time will do.

Concerning the place, again choose a place where you are least disturbed. It can be your bedroom, your office room, a chapel near you, or whatever. Some construct a small room where there are an electric fan, light and chair and no other furniture. In my case when I started I used a chapel. People usually do not disturb you when you are in a chapel.

Just sit there in that place during the time when you make yourself available to the Spirit. That is step one.

Step 2. Allow him to communicate with you. As you sit there just allow the Spirit to communicate with you. He communicates with you among many means through three main methods. The first method is by the inward word. As you sit there ideas will comes to you. If you have the intention of being available to him, he is the one already communicating to you through these ideas. Do not think that those ideas still come from your self through your brain. They are already the ideas of the Spirit. He is already communicating to you.

The second method is by the word in creation. Creation outside of you is used by the Spirit to communicate with you. This may be a beautiful flower you are gazing at on your table, or it may be the wall you are facing, or the mountain beyond seen through the window. The Spirit communicates through that item of creation. He may impress you about its beauty, its durability, its greatness.

The third method he ordinarily uses to communicate with you is by the word in some books. This may be a Bible, a Qur’an, a Buddhist or Hindu scripture or any other sacred book in any religion. Open it and read it as he impresses upon your mind the ideas from the book.

Step 3. Listen to him. Do not just keep on reading, or wondering at the flower, or hearing inwardly the interior word. Listen to the Spirit. In other words, listen attentively. Concentrate on what he is saying to you. Spiritual enlightenment is not a frivolous matter. It is serious business.

Step 4. Think about what he tells you. Then think about what the Spirit tells you. This is called by some as meditation. It is going over and over in your mind the ideas and words he tells you. Relate these words to your life, to your work, to your dealings with your family members, with your companions in work and leisure.

This is now the time for talking with the Spirit. Talk with him. If you follow the steps carefully you will no longer be talking with yourself, you will really be talking with the Spirit of enlightenment. Remember he is more interested in talking with you than you to him. There is no room for deception here as long as you follow the steps carefully.

Do not be afraid that another spirit is talking with you. This can only happen if you have a preconceived idea of what to think when you enter that place and time which you make available for him. As long as you are open to him, he will not deceive you nor allow you to be deceived by other spirits.

Step 5. Do what he bids you to do. Then, the next step is most important. Do what he bids you to do. It may be just to come back to that place the next day at the same appointed time. It may be to become more loving to your wife and children. It may be just to be more considerate of those people you work with. Whatever he tells you that you do.

Step 6. Record your experience with him. It is best to keep a written record of your experience with the Spirit of truth who enlightens every person in this world, no matter what your religion is. Write down some of the ideas he shares with you. It need not be extensive. It can be brief summaries of the ideas the Spirit impressed upon your mind. Some people call this journalizing or keeping a diary.

The advantage of having a written record of these ideas is that later you will be able to see the pathway or pathways the Spirit has led you along, as you read this. Then you can thank the Spirit. In this way also you will have some idea where the Spirit is leading you.

Another benefit you can have in writing down these impressions from the Spirit is that you can show it to a friend whom you trust and share with her the ways of the Spirit. In this way you help your friend and you also help yourself, because your friend may give you some comments about your journal.

Just write the date when you write the ideas. I usually write the day and date and then I encircle these so that it can be easily located in my notebook. Like for example today I would write as Th101021, meaning Thursday, 2010 of the 10th month of the year and the date is 21.

When I began this practice I used to have one notebook only for this purpose. Later on I have a big notebook for all the notes that I write and I put my journal as only one topic in my notebook. I entitle this portion of my notebook as Spiritual.

Step 7. Be faithful to these steps until they become a habit in your life. Finally, be faithful to this practice even when you do not feel doing it. In the beginning you may get excited. So many ideas will flood your mind. Later you may wonder that you do not feel going through the exercise and the ideas seem to be fewer and fewer. Just persevere. But do not force yourself. If you need to rest from the routine, take a rest. Later come back to it.

As you begin to be faithful to this exercise of making yourself available to the communication of the Spirit you will notice that your life is becoming well ordered and new and useful ideas come to you. You will be more and more enlightened.

The Spirit sooner or later will guide you to fuller and fuller enlightenment and you will be able to enlighten others also. That is the pathway of spiritual enlightenment.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Spirituality - How Meditation Can Make You Spiritual

2010-10-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

If you want to wake up spiritually, paradoxically one of the first things you have to do is to slow down your life and take stock of the things and images around you.

When we physically wake up in the morning, we rise up and use our eyes to look around and see what is there around us. In the spiritual life that is also what happens. We rise up using our mind to look around us. That is basically what meditation is, a looking around us, using our mind, not just our eyes.

And meditation can make you spiritual during these times when there are signs of a spiritual awakening because of the uneasiness and spiritual hunger of very many who are dissatisfied with the fast pace of modern life. Indeed there is spiritual awakening happening around us and those who are spiritually awakened help the others who are just groping around to get their bearings in life.

Many Meanings of Meditation

To find out how meditation can make you spiritual, you need first to know more what meditation is. If you read books and articles about meditation you will notice that there are so many meanings of meditation—from thinking to no thinking at all. Again we shall know more about it by getting rid of meanings which have been applied to it but are not really descriptive of it. And we know what meditation really is only by going through it, by doing it, by experiencing it, not by talking or writing or reading about it.

What Meditation Is Not

Meditation is not introspection, a mental examination of one’s feelings, thoughts, condition, situation, sensations. This is nearly brooding. And brooding is not related to meditation, except that both are processes of the mind.

Meditation is not mere thinking, either, even deep thinking or planning. One can think deeply about a project proposal he intends to send to a funding agency but that is not meditation. Meditation is a relaxing experience, not a heavy burden on our mind.

The Levels of Meditation

There are many grades or levels of meditation. It starts with awareness of yourself in relation to others. Then it graduates to awareness of the world in relation to you. Finally, if you are a Christian, it ends with the awareness of God as your loving Father. If you are a Muslim, it may end with the awareness of God as Most Compassionate, Most Merciful to you and others. And if you are a Buddhist it may end with the awareness of ultimate freedom from rebirth and constant rebirth. Other religions also have their end point in meditation, all valid and relevant to their practitioners.

This is the kind of meditation that can make you spiritual, an ever growing awareness of yourself in relation to others, of the world in relation to you and of God in relation to all. And what do we mean by spiritual? Basically it means that you are a loving person. For our whole existence is summed up in love.

And how can meditation make you spiritual?

First, by slowing down the pace of your life. No matter what meaning you take of meditation, as long as it is not introspection and mere thinking but basically an awareness of relationships, to yourself, to others and to God, it takes time out of life to view and think of these relationships. Slowing your life means that you are able to think of others and help them.

Secondly, meditation connects you with the whole of creation and non-created reality. In this interconnectedness of all things you realize the oneness of all.

And thirdly, meditation makes you loving. Have you noticed the Buddhist monks? They are so compassionate, even toward animals. Compassion is the fruit of genuine meditation.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Leading a Spiritual Life

2010-10-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

In an age of spiritual awakening such as we are going through, there are more and more people who are spiritually awakened and they would like to lead a spiritual life. Somehow they are dissatisfied with their present state of life in religion and want something more relevant in their lives. There is a sense of uneasiness and spiritual hunger in their hearts. This is just one of the signs of a spiritual awakening happening right before our very eyes.

People Turn to Spirituality From Religion

The traditional churches are mostly empty in North America and in Europe, places where once religion mightily flourished even to the shedding of blood. Why? Because people are looking for something substantial, something they can truly make use of in these times of exploding information overload.

And rightly they turn to spirituality. And they seek spiritual leaders, men and women who are leading a spiritual life.

This article describes what leading a spiritual life is. Hopefully the reader will realize that this is the kind of life she is searching for. And she will have some ideas how to lead it herself.

By showing what a thing is not, we may be able to easily grasp what it really is.

What Leading a Spiritual Life Is Not

Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading a religious life. There are many religious people who are not manifestly leading a spiritual life. If you are a Catholic, just observe the many daily church goers, attending Mass every day, whose lives do not show any improvement in the way they deal with people, even with their household help.

If you are a Protestant, observe how many of those who go to a preaching service also go to the midweek prayer sessions. Very few indeed. And still observe those who go to the midweek prayer sessions. Listen carefully to what they speak and how they speak. They do not talk about their Lord but about this and that thing which needs to be done, to be improved, to be changed.

These people are religious indeed, but manifestly not spiritual.

Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading a moral life. A person may be totally morally upright according to human standards and yet not be spiritual. He may observe all the commandments he knows but fail to be spiritual.

The best example I can think of right now of a person who was moral but not spiritual is Immanuel Kant. He was a totally upright man as far as human standards are concerned. He put forth a moral maxim which he faithfully followed and I render it here as: So behave that your action becomes a norm of universal law. This means that if you follow this maxim you are always following moral laws, the best of moral laws, because they are part of the universal law. And Kant just did that. He never hurt anyone, did not bother anyone, and most probably did not also love anyone. He died a bachelor.

Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading a theological life. There are many theologians who day and night ponder over the Bible and their volume upon volume of books. But many of them are not necessarily spiritual. How do I know? You approach them and they begin to talk to you and spin out so many theories related to theology. But they leave your heart empty.

Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading a philanthropic life. You may be giving millions of dollars to the poor or not so poor, but you may not be able to give them your heart.
Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading a healthy life. There are many saints of God who were poor in health but spiritually they were rich.

Leading a spiritual life is not the same as leading an intellectual life. There are many scientists and philosophers who devote their lives to intellectual pursuits, to research work both speculative and practical, but their lives are not necessarily spiritual by this. Some of them do not even respect life. They want to change our life processes by the so-called genetic engineering.

So, if leading a spiritual life is not all this, what is it? In a sense the answer is very simple, and yet it cannot be understood by someone whose mind is not attuned to spiritual reality.

What Leading a Spiritual Life Is

Leading a spiritual life is being concerned with the things of the spirit.

The religious person is concerned with the doctrines, practices and rites of her religion, the moral person is concerned with morality, with living uprightly, the theologian is concerned with the fine points of theology, the philanthropist is concerned with how to distribute his wealth, the health fanatic is concerned with keeping herself young and active, the intellectual elite is concerned with discovering more and more knowledge.

They are all concerned with something that is not necessarily spiritual. But the spiritual person is concerned with the things of the spirit and she leads her life accordingly.

And what are the things of the spirit? Basically it is loving the self and others as they ought to be loved, to care for them, to have compassion for them. This is easily said than done.

So simple and yet so impossible to do, because we have a fallen nature. Fallen nature simply means that we are naturally concerned about ourselves than others. Perhaps too overly concerned about ourselves. We are pre-occupied with our Ego in capital letters.

That is why we need a guide to lead us out of ourselves to the needs of others. Because even the most fundamental needs of others we cannot know unless the eyes of the spirit are opened: the need to love and be loved. But those who are willing to lead a spiritual life are now ready to wake up spiritually.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Jesus' Home Life — Now Revealed

2010-10-04T04:40:00.000-07:00

Most Christians do not bother about Jesus’ home life, the so-called hidden years of Jesus in Nazareth. They think that what is important for them is his public life, the last 3 to 4 years of his life when he preached, taught, suffered and died. They do not realize that Jesus’ hidden life or home life is as important as his public life to us. Why is this?

Jesus’ Hidden Life Is As Important As His Public Life

This is because it is his home life that most of us Christians can imitate. Most of us do not go about preaching, teaching, healing the sick, fighting the religious authorities of our day, as Jesus did in the last 3 to 4 years of his life. Most of us stay at home at night and go to our work during the day. We work at our respective places in the business or agricultural world. Therefore we cannot imitate his public life unless we are a wandering evangelist. And most of us are not.

Since most of us labor in our work places, we need to look at how Jesus labored in his own work place so that we can imitate this life, our model life.

A Very Good Objection

The objection that is immediately put up is: But we know so little of his home life. How can we imitate it?

This objection is due to the fact that on superficial reading of the Bible we discover very few verses which deal with his home life or hidden life. But if we open wide our spiritual eyes we will see that there is more than enough description of this home life.

More Information About Jesus’ Home Life

First, we go to 2 verses which summarize Jesus’ life. They are found in the Letter to the Hebrews. It says in one verse that Jesus was made like us in all things and again in another verse it says that he understands our feelings, our weaknesses, our infirmities because he was tried in every respect but he did not sin. These verses describe a lot about Jesus. He was as human as we are.

As a child he played as all children play. We do not have to believe the apocryphal gospels about the games he played, like fashioning a clay into a live bird.

As a young man he sang, danced, drank wine, reveled during feast days. How do we know? Because he behaved like any normal young man behaved.

Some may ask: Was he sexually attracted to the opposite sex? Sure, he was, because he was a normal human being. But he had no thought of having a sinful relationship with a girl around his own age.

Some think this was not fitting for Jesus to experience, a sexual attraction to the opposite sex. But he could not be like us in all things if he did not experience this attraction. And the Word of God is clear: He was like unto us in all things, only he did not sin. And there is nothing sinful in sexual attraction. It is inbuilt in our human nature by God himself. It is a most natural feeling.

Secondly, from the Gospels we know how Jesus started his day. He started his day very early, rising up long before the dawning of the day, then he would go out to a lonely place and there prayed, that is, conversed with his heavenly Father.

We also know how he closed this day, again with prayer, conversing with his heavenly Father.

Thirdly, still from the Gospels we know what Jesus did during the day in his home. He worked as a carpenter: building and repairing houses, making and fixing furniture, fashioning farm implements. According to Justin the Martyr, plows and yokes made by Jesus were still in existence during his time, that is, around 120.

Fourthly, still from the Gospels, we know that every Sabbath day or Saturday Jesus went to the local synagogue (like our chapel) and he would read the Scriptures publicly.

Fifthly, if we are genuine Christians this home life of Jesus is being relived in us as we live from day to day. For the real life we live as Christians is his life. We merely continue the home life of Jesus in our own home life.

Jesus’ Home Life Revealed

Now we know how Jesus lived in Nazareth. He rose up very early in the morning to converse with his Father God. Like us he ate and drank, and he worked as a carpenter and before retiring at night he conversed again with his Father God. During Sabbath or Saturdays, instead of working, he went to the synagogue to read God’s Word publicly.

Finally, Jesus lives his home life again in us, making us imitate him in those hidden years of his life in our own hidden life. Now we know the home life of Jesus. It is also our home life lived in him.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

The Missing Years of Jesus' Life — Now Found

2010-09-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

What did Jesus do between the ages of 12 and 30 years? This question has been the subject of many speculations. And there have been many answers, some of them purportedly based on scientific research.

Some of the answers say that he went to India, to England, to Alexandria, and to other places as well. They say he studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Egyptian wisdom, etc.

Those Years Are Not Missing

It is not true to say that those years are missing. When we say that something is missing what we usually mean is that it cannot be found or it is lost. For example, we say that we miss our pet dog, meaning that we cannot find it or it is absent from where we are. We also say, We missed the train, meaning we lost our chance to ride that train.

But in the case of Jesus those 18 years between the time he was 12 years old and 30 years old, are not really missing because they are not lost and we can easily find them. Those years are recorded properly. First, Luke wrote that he was 12 years old when he was lost to his parents and then found in the temple. Then a little further he wrote that when Jesus began his ministry he was about 30 years of age. 30 minus 12 are 18 years. We found those 18 years by simply deducting 12 from 30. They are not lost years.

What is missing is not the years but the description, as most readers would want it in a story, of what Jesus did during those years. This is what we do not find in the Gospels of the Christian Bible.

The Gospels Are Not Mere Stories

The desire to know what happened in Jesus’ life during those 18 years arises from a misunderstanding of the Gospels as we have them in the Christian Bible. Our tendency is to read these Gospels as stories about Jesus’ life or his biography. We do not realize and perhaps we will never realize that these are not ordinary stories or biographies of Jesus, unless somebody tells us so, and shows us why they are not stories or biographies.

Those Gospels are what they are, gospels, not biographies.

The meaning of Gospel is announcement of good news. That is what the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are. They are announcements of the good news of Jesus. They are not a collection of stories about Jesus’ life to merely inform or entertain us. They are a public announcement of events and words which if believed benefits the listener in a life-changing way.

How I Discovered That the Gospels Are Not Mere Stories

I myself did not grasp this fact about these gospels although I had a formal training in theology. In my theological studies about the Gospels I was taught that they are indeed Gospels. But still the idea persisted in my mind that they were stories or portions of the biographies of Jesus.

The realization that the Gospels are announcements of the good news of Jesus came to me much, much later in life. It dawned on me while I was listening to an audio version of the Gospel according to Mark. I heard this Gospel read on the Internet and the tone of the reader was that of a person who was announcing a very important, life changing news. There and then I realized what is meant that the Gospel of Mark is an announcement, not a story telling. As a boy I read it like a Bible story. During the time I listened to this audio version the words were still the same, but now they were proclaimed as components of a good news.

The So-called Missing Years Are Fully Contained in the Gospels

Viewed as an announcement the 18 years of Jesus are fully contained in this description of Luke: And he went down with them (his parents) and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them; And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and years, and in favor with God and man.

The So-called Missing Years Are Present In Us

Secondly, those years are not really missing when we relate our life to that of Jesus. We carry those years within us. The reason for this is because Christ is our life, as Paul says in his letter to the Colossians. If Jesus is our life, the life of Jesus is in us, and therefore his life before the creation of this world, his life after creation including his human life, is also our life and those years, from the time he was 12 to 30 years old, are also within us. This will take another full article to explain but for now we can see already the truth of this, if we have indeed the life of Jesus in us.

Jesus said that he is the vine and we are the branches. In a plant the same life flows from the vine to its branches. The same life of Jesus the vine flows to us the branches, including his life the time he was 12 years old to 30 years old.

The so-called missing years of Jesus’ life are no longer missing. We have found them if we realize the Gospels are announcements of good news and if we realize that the life of Jesus still flows in us and through us.

So, those 18 years are not really missing. We found them by subtracting 12 from 30. What Jesus did during those years is fully proclaimed by Luke in 2 verses in the Christian Bible. And the reality of those 18 years is within us. We have found those 18 years. They are in us. We continue living them.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Spirituality in Prisons

2010-09-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

Spirituality in prisons is a strange topic. It is like the topic of fire in water. Why? Because we think of prisons as places where criminals, convicted or presumed innocent, live. How can spirituality co-exist with these criminals? We would think that spirituality is in churches and homes but hardly in prisons among criminals.

Prisons Can Be Places of Deep Spirituality

But if we reflect seriously, prisons can indeed be places where spirituality can germinate, grow, bloom and bear fruit.

Just take the case of Viktor Emil Frankl, who was imprisoned in the concentration camps of Hitler during World War II. Because of this experience in prison he was able to write the best-selling book, MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. His spirituality which bloomed in the most sordid conditions in the camps is witness to the fact that indeed prisons can be a fertile ground for spirituality.

Or take the case of Benigno Aquino Jr. who was converted to genuine Christianity and deep spirituality in the prison cells where he was put after Ferdinand Marcos, then President of the Philippines, declared Martial Law in September 21, 1972.

Factors Making Prisons Places of Deep Spirituality

The primary factor which makes prisons a fertile ground for spirituality is the abundance of time prisoners enjoy. Prisoners have plenty of time in their prison quarters for themselves, even for those who are condemned to do hard labor.

A second factor is suffering. Prisoners suffer. They suffer from restrictions of movement, food and human relations. The last restriction makes them very lonely and is perhaps for most, as it was for me once, the worst suffering.

A person who is lonely and suffering and has plenty of time for himself or herself is bound to think and think more. He can do no other thing except commit suicide. But in prisons suicide is carefully guarded against.

There are of course diverse kinds of prisons, from being locked up in a cell to being confined to a penal colony where prisoners can cultivate farms and simulate normal life.

But ample time and lots of suffering do provide a favorable setting for the presence and flourishing of spirituality in prisons.

The two months I was confined in prison in 1968 gave me ample time to reflect on my own life. Fortunately I was allowed to have a Bible which I kept on reading. Loneliness was indeed a cause of sharp and deep suffering. I was able to smuggle out a letter through the help of a fellow prisoner who was getting out of confinement. There I realized that indeed spirituality could germinate, grow, bloom and fructify in prison conditions.

Religiosity in Prisons Is Not Enough

This may lead authorities to take advantage of this opportunity to sow the seeds of spirituality among our prisoners. Many prison establishments do provide religious services. There are even prison chaplains. Regular Bible studies are conducted in many prison institutions. But spirituality as such is not given due importance.

Religiosity is not the same as spirituality. In religiosity the focus is on the religious thinking, words and religious acts of a prisoner, like praying and participating in church related services. In spirituality the focus is on the positive creativity of a person’s spirit, not just the making of handicrafts or engaging in works of art, but in truly liberating the spirit from the confines of an enslaved life, perhaps enslaved by murderous passions or addictions or other factors.

Obstacle to Spirituality in Prisons

An obstacle to the germination and growth of spirituality in prisons is the reformatory mentality many prison establishments have. This is very apparent by their use of the term “correctional” or “reformatory”. They want their prison inmates to reform, to change their behavior, from bad to good, from greed to generosity, from murdering for revenge to forgiveness of wrongdoing done to them. To achieve this objective there are drills, exercises, classes, sessions, etc.

But the inmates cannot change their behavior unless new life is stirred up among them, unless they are convinced of the primacy of the spirit in their life. This is where a real ministry in prisons can be done: not a change in behavior, but in total orientation; not in the change of language the prisoners use, but a completely new mind.

A Challenge to Prison Administrators

May our prison authorities see the possibilities of making their correctional facilities gardens of genuine spirituality.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Create Prosperity in Your Spiritual Life

2010-09-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Spirituality is directly linked to prosperity in life but most people do not know this. Either they have a false notion of spirituality or they think only of prosperity from an economic or materialistic point of view.

Meaning of Prosperity

When people hear or read the word “prosperity” the immediate image that usually comes to their mind is that of an abundance of material goods. This easily evokes the image of financial prosperity or wealth.

They do not realize that generally there are three levels of prosperity.

The basic meaning of “prosper” from which the word “prosperity” comes from is to “succeed,” from the Latin “prosperare.” Because most people measure success in terms of financial gains, the word “to prosper” has come to mean “to succeed in business or in financial endeavors.”

Prosperity therefore can be applied to success in the acquisition of wealth or material goods. But this is only one level, perhaps the lowest level, but for most people the most important level.

But it can also be applied to success in the acquisition of education or psychological goods. This is a second level. The person has attained success as a teacher, as a professional, or as a person honored in his community. He has prospered in his career.

Thirdly, prosperity can be applied to success in the acquisition of spiritual goods. This is prosperity in the spiritual life. This is what we want to describe here, how you can create prosperity in your spiritual life.

Difference in Spiritual Prosperity

But first let us be clear what the meaning is of prosperity in our spiritual life. Prosperity in our material life is easily gauged by the amount of money we have in the bank or in the investments we enter into. Prosperity in our mental life is also easily gauged by the academic titles we add to our names, usually abbreviations of doctoral degrees. But prosperity in our spiritual life is a little more difficult to measure.

The things of the spirit are not visible, like money or diplomas or transcripts of school records. They are only perceived by the effects that they produce in our lives. Therefore we can only describe prosperity in our spiritual life by the effects this produces in our life.

Meaning of Prosperity in the Spiritual Life

Basic to prosperity in our spiritual life is a nearness to God, a nearness that is personally intimate.

I once met a person who was financially successful. He had built a school and it was thriving. He was also educationally successful. He had a sharp mind and mixed easily with other highly educated persons. But he told us that he just could not conceive of an intimate relation with God. For him God was remote, God was someone impersonal. His concept of God was that of a being who created this world and left it to work out with the laws he put into it. This man was not prosperous in his spiritual life.

How is this nearness, this personal intimacy with God manifested in a person’s life? It is manifested in the kindness he shows to those around him.

Another essential element of prosperity in our spiritual life is the richness of spiritual values in a person’s life. This is manifested by a tolerance of religions. The person who is spiritually prosperous is never bigoted. He is rich spiritually, so he is not attached to one doctrine or opinion.

A third essential element of prosperity in the spiritual life is wisdom. The spiritually rich person is rich in wisdom. This is manifested by his timely advices and wise decisions. I once went to an old man in the dead of the night. Before I could speak, the old man knew that I needed help and in what aspect I needed help. He had the wisdom to tell the members of his family to help me. He was spiritually prosperous, though financially poor.

These three things, intimacy with God, richness of spiritual values, and wisdom constitute spiritual wealth. The person who has them is spiritually prosperous, has prosperity in his or her spiritual life.

How to Create Prosperity in Your Spiritual Life

How then do you create this kind of prosperity in your spiritual life? The question seems misleading because in a sense you cannot do something or a technique in order to create it, this prosperity in the spiritual life. When we say or read the word “create” the connotation is that we are going to do something in order to produce something else. The artist creates a beautiful picture by thinking about it in his mind and by painting it on canvass. The writer creates a novel by thinking about a plot and weaving a story around this plot.

But in the spiritual life strictly speaking we do not create prosperity. It is a gift. We ask it of God who creates it in us. Analogously we do create spiritual prosperity in our life by disposing ourselves to receive this gift. Without this disposing on our part we would never attain prosperity in our spiritual life.

So, a proper question to ask is: How do you dispose yourself so that God can create prosperity in your spiritual life? There are three dispositions you need to go through.

The first disposition is to be open to all the treasures of the spiritual life that you can see or read about you. You read the Bible if you are a Christian, the Qur’an if you are a Muslim, the Bhavagad Gita if you are a Hindu, the Tripitaka if you are a Buddhist, whatever is written by the sages of the religions, great and small. Or you read any or all of these books whatever your religion is.

The second disposition is to ponder on the sayings you read in these books and relate them to your life. It is not a matter of reading for the sake of curiosity. You read in order to pause and ponder. If you read through one of the great spiritual books just to finish it, it will not profit you. You read and pause and think and relate what you think with your life.

The third disposition is to just rest your mind. Do not think when the moment comes that you feel not thinking anymore. Just think of the presence of the Great Spirit in you and others.

As you become used to these dispositions great wisdom is going to flood into your soul, you accumulate more and more of the values of the spiritual life, and you become more and more intimate with God. You become prosperous in your spiritual life. You create prosperity in your spiritual life.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

The Meaning of Spirituality in Life

2010-09-17T04:20:00.000-07:00

We may think that the meaning of spirituality in life is simple. Just look it up in the dictionary and you have it.

Diverse Meanings of Spirituality

But even looking at its meaning in the dictionary we will find that there are three to four definitions, and one of them is a definition that seems to contradict its basic concept. It defines spirituality as church property which is something material, not spiritual.

And the dictionary lists 9 different contexts in which this word “spirituality” can be used.

Scientists in a certain workshop could not agree on the meaning of spirituality.

So, what really is the meaning of spirituality in life?

Difficulty in Getting the Meaning Without Experiencing It

A difficulty in getting at the meaning of spirituality in life is that we cannot know its meaning if we have not experienced it to a certain degree. And judging from our observation of the people around us they seem to be concerned only with the material things, like how to produce money for a living, how to spend it, how to hoard it. It seems that these people do not have any experience of spirituality at all.

But if it is true that the human being is composed of body, soul and spirit, then any human being has an experience of spirituality and therefore has a notion of its meaning.

Spirituality in life then is a way of living wherein the person gives proper emphasis to the spiritual part of his being.

The athlete, the body builder, the beautician, the gym owners give emphasis to the physical aspect of the person, the body.

The academician, the teacher in our schools, the educational institutions give emphasis to the mental aspect of the person, the soul.

The religious persons, the spiritual healers, the shamans give emphasis to the spiritual aspect of the person, the spirit.

Meaning of Spirituality in Life

Spirituality in life then is giving emphasis and priority to the spiritual aspect in our life, the things which endure, like faith or belief in the world of spirits and God, hope or desire for better things in life, and love or union with the spirits and with God.

When a person lives in such a way that he gives proper value to the spiritual dimension of his existence, then he has a mature spirituality. But if he does not live in such a way then he only has incipient or beginning spirituality.

Furthermore once a person lives a mature spiritual life, he gives primacy to the spiritual dimension of his life. He is no longer caught in the rat race. He has a calmness about him. He is no longer a slave of material things, like money, or of psychological rewards, like fame.

Spirituality in life enables us to live life to the full if we also take care of our physical and mental life. These three dimensions are all essential in life, but the primary one is spiritual, a dimension which most people seem to forget or relegate to the background of their life.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

The Purpose of Going on a Spiritual Journey

2010-09-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

Spirituality is not simply a topic to be discussed by those who want to know more about spiritual things. There is a practical purpose for discussing things related to spirituality.

And so also there is a practical purpose in going on a spiritual journey. What that purpose is will be made clear in this article.

Purpose Is Different from Destination

There is a physical journey, a journey to a physical destination, a place. And there is always a purpose in such a journey. The place is not the purpose. It is only a destination. Usually, one or a combination of these is the purpose of a physical journey: a business or work related transaction, a vacation, a bonding of a relationship.

A scientist wants to go to the south pole to record the temperature there. His purpose in going there is not the south pole but the recording of the temperature.

A tired worker wants to go to Australia to enjoy a vacation there. His purpose is not Australia, but the vacation, rest and excitement Australia can offer to him.

The same is true in a mental journey, going into the ideas of men and women who lived a long time ago or in other areas of the world. The purpose is not just to know these ideas. The purpose is to see how these ideas may be of help to the one reading these ideas. We read about the Greek tragedies in order to learn how tragedies are worked out in one’s life with the purpose of avoiding them.

In a spiritual journey our destination is the world of spirits and ultimately God Himself, but He is not the purpose of such a journey. He is only the destination, not the purpose of the journey. We want to go there because He has something to offer us which we cannot acquire by a physical or mental journey.

The Purpose of Our Spiritual Journey

The purpose of a spiritual journey may be curiosity, trying to know what lies in the realm of the spirits. But more than curiosity the person undergoing a spiritual journey wants to enjoy life to the fullest possible that he can attain.

One may say that the purpose of a spiritual journey is to enjoy God. But what is in God that we can enjoy?

Paradoxically, the one which we are searching when we go on a spiritual journey is our true self, the self which we have in God. Let me explain.

If you observe carefully, in any journey our purpose is something that is related to our self. The scientist goes on a journey to the south pole because of his desire to record the temperature there. He wants to satisfy his desire to measure such temperature and report it to the world. He wants his self to be recognized as the one who shall have measured and recorded such a temperature.

The tired worker wants to go on vacation in order to relax his self, find satisfaction in rest and excitement.

The reader goes into the ideas of other people because he or she wants to use these ideas for his or her self.

The self is always the reference of our purpose in a journey. The self is always the one who will benefit from a journey.

The same is true in a spiritual journey. We are looking for our true self. And this true self can only be found in the world of spirits, in God.

That is why we read that one time Jesus appeared to Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada and said to her, Seek your self in me.

We Are Searching for Our True Self in God

When we undertake a spiritual journey it is for the purpose of finding our true self, our real self. The self is always the focus of spirituality. We read more about this topic and learn more about it for the sake of our self, our true self.

Why, are there other selves that are not our true self? Yes, there are. The self that we present to other people is not really our true self, but the one that we want them to see. We want to appear diligent, therefore we busy ourselves with work, although deep inside we may want to be lazy. We want to appear righteous before others, and so we try to be religious and obey the rules and regulations of our church and society, but deep inside we know that we are just tired of pretending to be so before other people.

But when we get to God we cannot show to him a self that we want to show Him. He knows us in and out. And only in Him can we be most relaxed, most natural. Only in Him can we enjoy our true self.

The purpose of going on a spiritual journey is to find and enjoy our true self.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Enjoy God

2010-09-15T03:06:00.000-07:00

Genuine spirituality enables us to enjoy God and enjoy things as they are in God.

We enjoy things. We enjoy doing things. We enjoy a cup of ice cream. We enjoy eating it. We enjoy seeing a beautiful sunset. We enjoy listening to good music. We enjoy the presence of a dear friend.

If these things, persons, activities are so enjoyable, their source must also be enjoyable, most probably in a greater degree.

If the ultimate source of all these things, persons, activities is God as Creator and Father, then God must also be enjoyable.

And if God willed that we enjoy these things, persons, and activities, He also wanted that we enjoy Him.

How then can we enjoy God? I have outlined 4 simple steps which we can take in order that we can enjoy God.

Definite Place, Definite Time

First is: Assign a definite, regular time and place for this activity, enjoying God, in your daily routine. It may be in the morning, noon, afternoon, or evening, whichever is most convenient for you. For the place, it may be in your bedroom, your office, or the transportation as you go to your work or in a garden outside your house. The duration of the time need not be long. Ten minutes will do as a starting duration. What is important is that during this time you are not disturbed.

And it is a regular time, not done sometimes in the morning, at other times in the afternoon, or evening. Of course, there may be emergencies when the regularity cannot be observed. But excepting these emergencies the time for this is fixed and regular, every day.

Awareness of God's Presence in and Around You

Second. Begin your time by being aware of God's presence in you and everything around you. Do not say, as some would begin their prayer, that now you put yourself in the presence of God. You do not need to put yourself in the presence of God. You are already there.

Be aware of God's presence in your body, in every part of your body, in your thoughts, in the words you may speak or read, in your activities, your breathing, your seeing, etc.

Then be aware of God's presence in the persons and/or things around you: the furniture, the trees, the grass, the part of the car, the persons around in the house, etc.

At this point you may ask, How do you think of God, as an old man with a beard, or as a young child with a staff, as a being surrounded by clouds, or as Pure Energy?

I suggest that you think of God simply as a Presence, not as a man whether old or young, not as an object, not as a force, but simply as Presence, He who is present in you and in everything around you. He is the Presence in every cell of your body, in every idea of your mind, in every desire of your heart.

It may also help you to recall His names in the religion to which you belong.

In the Christian Bible He is called the God of Abraham, the "I am" of Moses, the Lord God of Hosts of Elijah. There are other names.

If you are a Muslim you may dwell on one or two of the 99 names of God, Allah, like the Most Compassionate One, etc.

If you are a Hindu you may want to think of the names of God in the Hindu Scriptures, Brahma, Vishnu, or Shiva.

If you are a Buddhist you may want to recall the Light that enlightens the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

Genuine spirituality does not discriminate among the different concepts and names of God. It knows that the reality of God cannot be grasped by concepts, ideas or names.

Whatever concept you have of God think of Him as the ever present Presence in you and all around you.

Converse With God About Anything That Comes to Your Mind

Third. Talk with this Presence, converse with Him. What do you talk about? Just about anything that comes to your mind. Thank Him for being there, for creating you and sustaining you. Praise Him for His goodness. Then tell Him about your needs and the needs of others. Thank Him for the opportunity to enjoy Him, His company.

If a tragedy has stricken your life ask Him why He has permitted such a tragedy when He is so good, so wise and so powerful. You may also ask Him what to do when tragedy strikes. Be aware that He is still there, even in the tragedy.

Do not expect an immediate answer from a voice whose sound you cannot see which direction it comes from. If you keep your mind open He will speak to your mind in a language only He and you can understand.

If you are sick, be aware that there too He is present, in your sickness, in the medicines prescribed for you, in the activities suggested to you by your therapist, whether it is stretching your hand or taking a walk, in the health care staff, the doctors, the nurses, the attendants. Talk to this Presence about your sickness. Ask for healing if it is His will.

You may also tell this Presence about your faults, failures and shortcomings, even your sins. And hope for His pardon for He is a Most Compassionate and Most Forgiving Presence.

Just talk to Him about anything that comes to your mind. Even of your desires, your ambition in life, etc. As you talk with Him you will enjoy Him as a dear friend. Your burdens will become lighter and your joys will become more intense.

And during the day when you have some free time, like taking a cup of coffee by yourself, return to this activity even if just for a minute or two. Think of God's presence in the coffee, in your sipping of it, in the cup, etc.

Let This Activity Inspire All Your Other Activities

Fourth. Do not put parentheses around this activity. What I mean is that do not do it and after the time you assigned to this, you forget it and you go to your work. Putting parentheses around this activity would separate it from the normal flow of your daily routine. As you leave the time and place, continue to think about these things as much as possible. Like, say to yourself, I am now going to my work and this Presence is still there in my work, in the pen and paper before me, in the computer in front of me, etc.

In this way the Presence permeates your whole day and this activity of being aware of the Presence becomes habitual. Gradually it becomes part of your system. You begin to enjoy the activity itself of devoting a definite time and place for this.

As you continue this activity you will find life more enjoyable, or more bearable if you are in the midst of great problems.

What To Do When This Activity Seems Meaningless

A caution is in order. Sometime in the course of such an activity, if you are faithful to it, there will come a time when you do not feel God's presence. In fact you may even feel that He is totally absent. The whole activity may seem meaningless to you. You may feel that you simply drag yourself, as it were, to this activity.

Do not despair. Do not force yourself to do this activity. Just keep rested. Do not even force yourself to think about it. Do not force your mind to think about this Presence. He is still there, despite your feelings to the contrary, because He is the Ever Present One. You may not feel His presence because He is going into your deepest center to transform you into Himself, just as you do not feel the activities, the heavings and convulsions, of the lava in the depths of the earth.

You Can See God Face to Face Now

If you are faithful to this activity the Presence will make Himself more and more enjoyed by you. It is even possible that He makes you see Him face to face while you are still on earth, of course not with your physical eyes, but with the eyes of your spirit. There is nothing more enjoyable on earth than to see God face to face with the eyes of your spirit. This is the goal of genuine spirituality.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Go Back to Your Spiritual Roots

2010-09-14T03:30:00.000-07:00

Roots of trees serve three purposes. First, they take up the nutrients from the soil and bring them up to the trunk, branches and leaves of the trees. Second, they take hold of the water from the ground so that this water does not go down immediately to the river all at once but only gradually. And third, roots make the trees stand tall and firm by grasping the earth on which they stand. The life of the trees depends on their roots as also upon the sun, the air and the soil around them.

Your Spirituality Depends On Your Spiritual Roots

In the same way the vitality of your spiritual life depends upon the roots of your spirituality, your spiritual roots. That is why you need to go back to these spiritual roots. Most people do not even know that their spiritual life has roots, let alone what these roots are.

By going back to your spiritual roots you will know how you can stand firm in your spiritual life and you will be able to draw more from the richness of the tradition of your spirituality.

Why We Need to Go Back to Our Spiritual Roots

You also need to go back to your spiritual roots because for almost all of us, and thus it includes you too, our spirituality is something that is overlaid upon our native consciousness. By native consciousness I mean the consciousness with which we were born. Our spirituality is not integrated with this native consciousness, it only covers it. That is why I said it is something overlaid upon our native consciousness. A personal reference may make this clear.

I was born to Filipino parents. But no sooner than a week after my birth the mantle, as it were, of Catholicism was put over me by baptism. Catholicism is not a religion native to us. It was brought to our shores by the Spaniards. And so the process of overlaying me with Catholic doctrines and practices began. Naturally I grew up thinking I was a Catholic.

The truth of the matter was that I only behaved and looked like a Catholic. Deep within me the native religion of the Filipinos was suppressed and covered over with Catholic religious practices and my consciousness was drowned in the sea of Catholic doctrines.

My Native Religion

Later through readings I came to know what my native religion was called. Anthropologists and historians call it Animism. But when I personally revived my native religion I found a better term to call it with. It is not Animism but Vitalism.

Animism is based on the fundamental premise that plants and animals have anima, a soul. I found out that even this concept of soul is foreign to us Filipinos. It came to us from the Greek Aristotle through the Spaniards. So I do not subscribe to Animism as my native religion.

Vitalism, on the other hand, is based on the fundamental premise that all things, not only plants and animals, have life, not just existence. The soil, the stone, the iron railings, the clouds, the air have life. This is the basic belief of my native religion, covered over by Catholicism for many years. (This understanding of Vitalism is a bit different from that offered in the dictionary which defines it as the “theory or doctrine that life processes arise from or contain a nonmaterial vital principle and cannot be explained entirely as physical and chemical phenomena.”)

I do not know what your native religion is. But if you belong to one of the great religions of the world, like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, chances are that your religion has covered over your native spirituality.

And just as the strength and vitality of a tree depend upon its roots, so also the strength and vitality of your spirituality depend upon its roots, the spiritual treasures God gifted you with even before you were born, in the tribe or ethnic group to which you belong.

How to Go Back to Your Spiritual Roots

How then do you go back to your spiritual roots so as to draw upon these spiritual treasures? I already told you how I went to my spiritual roots: by reading about my native religion, by practicing it, and by reflecting upon it. You can do the same.

First, learn about your native religion, the religion of your tribe or ethnic group. Exponents of the world’s great religions may tell you that your religion is pagan and filled with superstitions. Do not entertain such comment. As you learn more about your native religion, you will appreciate its beauty and richness. Read more about your ethnic origins. All of us belong to an ethnic group because God created tribes, not just individual persons.

Second, practice your native religion. As you practice it I am sure you will respect and love more your environment. Today there is much talk about global warming and environmental degradation. The waters of the ocean are rising as the earth’s temperature increases, melting the icecaps of the north and south poles. This is because whole populations have forgotten the religion and spirituality God endowed them with and have adopted man-made religions which are manipulative of the earth.

Third, reflect on your native religion. Integrate it with the religion that you have acquired as an adult. The marriage of your native religion and that which you have acquired (if you did acquire one) will produce a richer and stronger spirituality. I am sure of it because it did in my case.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

How to Start Your Spiritual Journey

2010-09-05T22:47:00.001-07:00

Welcome aboard on a spiritual journey! You may be wondering what a spiritual journey is. Well, it is the most exciting of all journeys and it is better than all other journeys combined. I hope to tell you here how you can start your spiritual journey. But first let us know what a spiritual journey is.

A spiritual journey can be known by comparing it with other kinds of journeys. Let us compare it with physical and mental journeys.

Physical, Mental and Spiritual Journeys Compared

In a physical journey we have a physical destination. It does not matter how near or how far that destination is. There is a place, a physical destination where a journey will end. It may be the next town, or the next country, a city halfway around the globe, or the next planet, or even a far away star. No matter what it is, there is a physical destination.

In a mental journey there is also a destination. Our mind will come to dwell on something. It might be the ideas of wise men who lived centuries before us, like Socrates or Aristotle. Our mind will travel to the time when they had these ideas. It is a destination in time, back to the time of the men and women who produced the ideas that we want to dwell on.

In a physical journey we need to have a physical means to get to our destination. It may be our feet, a bicycle, a car, a train, a boat or an airplane, or a rocket plane or a combination of any of these. We include also the food while we are in this or that kind of transportation.

In a mental journey we need also to have mental means to get to our mental destination. This usually consists of our brain, our mind, our imagination, our emotions, the books around us, the men and women who knew the men whose ideas we want our mind to come to.

Furthermore in a physical and mental journey we need to have a purpose why we want to get there, even if it is just to satisfy our curiosity, just to see the place or feel the feelings of those men involved in a story or drama.

And when we embark upon a journey for the first time we need to have a guide, either a person from whom we can ask ideas about our destination and the means to get there, or one who will go with us like a tourist guide, or at least a map or written direction where to start, what transportation to take, the sign or signs that tell us we shall have reached our destination.

If you want to start your spiritual journey you need to know these: your destination, the means to get there, the purpose why you want to get there, a guide to help you get there. These are the elements of a journey and they are all present in a physical, mental, or spiritual journey.

The destination in a spiritual journey is the world of the spirits, and ultimately the Original Spirit himself. If the destination of a physical journey is a place, that of a mental journey ideas in time, the destination of a spiritual journey is a spiritual one, the world of the spirits and ultimately the Original Spirit from whom all came from.

The means to get to the world of the spirits and the Original Spirit consists of spiritual means. These are basically faith, hope and love that work in solitary prayer.

The purpose of a spiritual journey can also be curiosity, but more than this, it is to enjoy life to the fullest possible that we can attain.

The guide on a spiritual journey may be a spiritual person who himself has undertaken this journey or the written guides left by spiritual persons, like the Bible for Christians, the Qur’an for Muslims, the Trepitaka of Buddhism, or the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus.

Are You Ready to Undertake a Spiritual Journey?

After learning something about the elements of this journey you need to ascertain whether you are ready to undertake this journey on your own. Children do not usually undertake a physical journey on their own. They need adults to accompany them. A certain level of maturity is needed to undertake even just a physical journey on one’s own.

So also you need to have a certain spiritual maturity in order to undertake the spiritual journey on your own. How do you know you have this maturity? In a physical journey usually the age and the educational background of a person are considered. In a spiritual journey, your spiritual age and knowledge of spiritual things are also to be considered. How do you know you have reached this spiritual age since it is not measured by years, unlike in physical age? You will know that you have reached this spiritual age if you have fallen in love with your God, just as in normal life falling in love with someone is an indication that you have reached a certain physical degree of maturity.

The Greatest of All Journeys

And why do I say that you are undergoing the greatest of all journeys when you start on a spiritual journey? It is because in a spiritual journey you are going to a place which is no place at all but a presence in all the places in the universe and you are going to a time which is not a time but an eternity which includes all time, from past to present to future. For the spirit is not bound by space and time, and you are going to that place of the spirit who transcends space and time. Briefly put, in a spiritual journey you are going to all places and to all times. This cannot be done in a physical journey because you only have one body. As a body you can be present only at one place in one time. But with the spirit you can be present to all places at the same time. An analogy may help clarify this if you have ridden a plane.

When you ride in a plane you begin by being present in the airport. When your plane goes up the air you leave the airport but you begin to look at the place surrounding the airport. Now you begin to see more places at once, not just the airport, a single place. By your vision you are present to all these places below you at the same time. So also by spirit you can be present to all of creation when you go beyond them.

Starting This Journey

And how do you start this journey? Assuming that you have fallen in love with the Original Spirit in whatever manifestation he has revealed himself to you, you take his personal guide or the written guides left by spiritual men and women of all ages. Each person will take a different kind according to his preference.

In my case my guides were the Christian Bible and the written works of Juan de Yepes Alvarez, a spiritual man who lived in the 16th century.

May I share with you the prescription of this man as you begin this journey. He said that if you want to reach your spiritual destination in a very short time you need to take these steps: 1. Desire to have pleasure in nothing; 2. Desire to possess nothing; 3. Desire to be nothing, and 4. Desire to know nothing.

If you have an acquaintance with Buddhism these prescriptions of Juan de Yepes Alvarez are like those in Buddhism, where we are urged not to desire anything because desire is the cause of suffering.

The most practical advice I can give you as you start your spiritual journey is to desire above all to reach and be united with the Original Spirit and to desire nothing that may hinder you in reaching this goal. Do not desire material goods, physical pleasure, mental enjoyment or any kind of pleasure if this will hinder you in reaching your goal, union with the Original Spirit.

Bon voyage on your spiritual journey.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet