Spirituality is a difficult topic to discuss with people who are only slightly aware of what its essence is. Even if you are beginning to be interested in spirituality, it is difficult to get a clear idea of what spirituality actually means. We all come to this with our own ideas and notions of what we can expect or what spirituality is about. Once you dive deep into this topic you can expect that all of your ideas about religion and spirituality can be transformed.
It's in the flow of the river... |
Spirituality is nothing airy-fairy, it’s not about praying to some deity or believing in some afterlife. When I am asked what I understand spirituality to be, I sum it up in the following sentence. Spirituality is the personal transformation from conceptual existence into the knowledge of one’s true self as the eternal, divine, infinite being in the here and now.
Once you have glimpsed your true self, the above description will be very clear for you. The tricky part is to recognize your true self without know what to look for. Our whole lives we are taught to divide the world into other and self. Our models of the world are ruling our perception. Instead of seeing clearly, we see our interpretation. For the true self to be able to recognize itself through you, all you have to do is to let go of conceptualization, explanation and interpretation completely. This is difficult because those are the programs you have been running your whole life. They happen faster than you can recognize. They happen before you think you perceive something.
But you can train your mind to be more present and let go of the need to interpret everything. Meditation allows you to rest in the pure state of being. The more you remain in that state, the less your mind will be distracted from what is. The longer you remain in the state of presence without categorization into self and other, the more your true self will reveal itself. You will recognize yourself as undefined consciousness. As the clear light that shines through and as all objects.
You can recognize the undivided nature of existence. There is nothing outside of consciousness and you are that consciousness. That consciousness experiences itself as a multitude of impressions you perceive as your life.
No other and no self. Only unity and true self. Rivers are no longer rivers, mountains are no longer mountains. Sanity has become insanity, truth has become falsehood and the world is flipped upside down.
But you will recognize real truth for the first time. And through a great transformation, rivers become rivers again and mountains become mountains again.