3 Ways to Analyze Your Personal Spirituality

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.

Click Here!

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.

3 Ways to Know You've Had a Spiritual Awakening

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.

Click Here!

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.

The Purpose of Going on a Spiritual Journey

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.

Click Here!

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.

How to Start Your Spiritual Journey

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.

Click Here!

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.