How To Do A Spiritual Awakening With Purpose
From the moment we are born and then all through our life, every moment is a spiritual awakening. We just don’t always see them that way. Many of us see life as a series of painful challenges punctuated by moments of ease where we rest and gather strength for the next inevitable problem. It’s like always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
What if we can flip that! What if life is blissful and every now and then we have challenges that give us an opportunity to grow and expand.
Sometimes once a person realizes that life is one big spiritual awakening, they decide they would like to commit to it and experience it in greater fullness. When that happens, then it seems as if teachers appear out of nowhere.
Teachers could be actual ‘teachers’ like religious leaders, yoga teachers, and other well-known spiritual teachers like Dali Lama. They can be teachers who come in unexpected forms like a boss, a parent, a friend, a spouse, a child. The teaching can come in the form of gentle support and even painful distress. Surprisingly, the teachers can also show up in non-human form such as an experience (hiking a mountain at sunrise), an animal (this is why I like animal totems), a weather event (even natural disasters can teach us about our life).
Through the years, my spiritual teachers have instilled in me the importance of building habits of mind, body and spirit. In June 2018, I remember my new teacher asking me how frequently I meditated. I was ashamed to say that it might happen once or twice a week. He then explained to me the importance of having a daily habit, how so much benefit would accumulate if I meditated every single day. Up to that point in my life, my habits would ebb and flow. Since that first conversation with him, I can say that now 90% of the time, I meditate daily. And he was correct, that the benefits accumulate and create an upward spiral!
Just like any endeavor, commitment to your personal growth and spiritual awakening requires daily practice. That’s why I like to call it my ‘Daily Practice’. If you want to reach a goal like playing a difficult song on the piano or guitar then you practice a little bit every day. You break it down into little pieces and you try to master each piece. Then one day you’ve mastered them all and you weave them together and play the entire song. Next, you practice the entire song every day for as long as necessary until you have it mastered and feel ready to perform to your audience. I imagine you can think of many other goals that have a similar path whether they be doing a Couch to 5K, running a marathon, improving a golf score, changing your diet, writing a book, aiming for a better job. What all of these endeavors have in common is daily effort. For each one, a person breaks the big goal down into tiny steps and then each day works on a tiny step.
Spiritual growth is no different! If we desire to uncover our own true nature then we build habits like faith and gratitude. We learn to manage our mind and not allow our thoughts to control our lives. We learn to listen to our true nature through mediation. We learn to manage our body with breathing exercises. This is facilitated by having a ‘Daily Practice’. We wake up each day and we engage in using our tools. Over time, we feel a change happening. We feel more blissful!
It’s baby steps. Do a little bit each day. And just like Weight Watchers emphasizes, if we mess up one day we don’t beat ourselves up, we just recommit and start again in that next moment.
As time goes along, one day we realize that we’ve shifted from seeing life as leap frogging from problem to problem to experiencing life as an opportunity to love and be loved.
I would love to be one of your teachers! I’d like to teach you what I have learned that has helped me navigate many painful episodes in my life. Will you join me for my new series, On The Trail With Susan? Click here to find out more details.
